Charlie Gilmour's Prison Diaries

I am being moved to a new cell. This will be the last you hear of me on here….

fear not. I shall continue to write to you dear diary, dear sweet diary on 

http://charliegilmour.wordpress.com/

we will be free

9.30 am

My dear, dear diary

The tables have turned! It seems that I’m being protected—by a man named Yardy. My cellmate Daz tells me that it was he that got the two bullies beaten up, and word has been passed round not to touch me.

 2 pm

A couple of old lags have asked to befriend me, because of my celebrity status. There’s Sproston the Raver, a 24 year old chomper who’s in here for some offence or other, and Neil the Plate. They go on and on about how Pink Flloyd got them into acid back in the noughties, how much they love the music etc etc. I tell them I hate it. And so would you if you were subjected to ‘The Ceiling’ on a continuous loop, night and day for the last 5 years.

Anyway Sproston tells me that I’m lucky. Yardy is a ‘face’ by all accounts. I must write a note to the man. Perhaps we can work together.

9 am

At breakfast I saw the two biscuit junkies from yesterday covered with bruises on their faces. I’m a bit flummoxed as to what happened. When I went to leave a man came up to me and called me ‘crazy diamond’.

2pm

I read that the kind souls of my ‘alma mater’ Oxbridge, have published a letter of support decrying the legal travesty that finds me here. Thanks to you Beaky, my mentor and friend, to you the patrician Lady Hilary Buck, dean of Teddy Hall, may your fluffy moustache endureth forever, you dear rector Rt Hon Joseph Beckett, such sympathetic eyes, and to my muse the orderly, Abdul, one longs for your smiling oriental face peering into my bedroom in the morning as I pen my latest song. I extract the letter in full:

As Oxbridge Universitydons, we view with some dismay the 16-month prison sentence imposed on Oxfordstudent Charlie Gilmour following his arrest at a student fees’ protest (Report, 16 july). Charlie was charged with violent disorder related for kicking in, though not, we repeat not, breaking, a window, shouting disorderly remarks and getting into a car boot in a royal convoy. Though much has been made by the media of his disrespect to the Cenotaph we note, without condoning his behaviour, that the monument was not injured by his activities though he did take a minor blow to his foot.

Manifestly exceeding a judicious and reasonable punishment for Snuffy’s actions, the severity of this sentence seems primarily “exemplary”: to warn young people that monumental protest will be criminalised and punished to the maximum permissible extent. These are not Stalinist times that we live in. He is no Julian of Norwich. He is but a little child, the apple of his parents’ eyes and must thus be freed immediately. Would it not have been more fit to dock him some pocket money and send him to bed? Would it not have been right to confiscate his milk, and even, even give him lines? Where is the justice? Where is the law?Those of us who are concerned to defend the right to dissent and protest in a democratic polity must speak out against the political message embodied by this extraordinary symbolic sentence. We must hope such worrying transvesties of natural justice do not deter people of wealth and standing from speaking up in these difficult times.

7 am

The margarine wasn’t for eating!!! I woke up in the middle of the night to find Dazro in some kind of bestial position, margarine spread all over his face. O, the horror. 

12 pm

“Sosh” - association time, is a chance to mingle. It is a chance for one to wash or to perambulate in the yard. Thusfar I have kept to me cell. 

Yesterday a friend of my cellmate, Daz, came in and offered me two mobiles, a wrap of speed, or the heroin substitute Subutex, trying his best to get me into debt. Why does he think I’d want TWO mobiles?

He tells me that a sixteenth of an ounce of marijuana costs two ounces of tobacco. Although I wonder how he gets it so cheap, I refused again. He looked nonplussed and dashed out.

3 pm BEATEN UP!!!

Outrage!! I’m in my cell when suddenly two new chaps come in and say, “Just give us your f**king baccy.” I tell them that I don’t have any baccy, I don’t smoke. The larger one, a meaty guy with shaven head, gets angry and grabs my biscuits off the desk and starts to walk off. I know that I can’t let him walk off with my biscuits. So I give him the heaviest punch I can. Unfortunately I miss and the guy pushes me onto the bed, peppering me with rabbit punches. .

I swing around and knee him in the flanks, but he doesn’t seem to feel it. Next I tug his hair. He cries out in pain and I manage to grab back my biscuits.

He’s about to bop me one when his mate shouts “Screw! Screw!”

The first bully calls me a crazy bastard and they run off.

I know I had to have this fight: bullies only pick on you if it’s an easy job. But my biscuits are crushed. 

Up at 7.00am for some breakfast. We’re given crackers and a cheesy roll which I crush in my hands in disdain. Then we return to our cells for the morning number call.

The wing warden Paul comes around to my cell. He is a short squat man with a grey face, aged by years indoors. 

He gives me and another new inmate the following speech.

“This is a new camp. It incorporates all we know and have learned of security measures. And in me you will not be dealing with a normal jailer, but one selected from the highest echelons.

You are encouraged to use the usual facilities—canteen, water cooler, Johnny can.

But give up your hopeless attempts to escape. Don’t fight, it will only makes things worse for you. We hope to have you here for a long time. Together we will triumph.”

I detest this man already. He reminds me of my stepdad Dav.

I’m locked in my cell killing time. My cellmate, Daz, and I don’t speak much. He’s an uncouth twat with little regard for hygiene. Witness— there’s no ashtray so he eats his cigarettes and uses the milk carton to quaff the taste. He’s also constantly spitting in the cell, a horrible habit— he even does it in his sleep.

11am

I’m feeling hungry. Wish I had eaten breakfast

The screws here are soulless individuals. Inhumanity reigns. 

I’ve been watching my cellmate Dazro. He’s a hoarder. He collects the bits of stray tobacco which fall from cigs and piles them into a little mound next to his bed. I think he’s saving this for a special day.

He also keeps paper cutouts which he reads over and over. I’ve no idea what a man of such little intelligence would find so fascinating.

 1.30 pm

We’re given lunch at 1.30pm.

The food is gruel, rice biscuits/bread with a small tub of margarine and some tomato potage. I’m famished so eat everything. Daz secretes his tub of margarine in his bunk for later. (He’s so strange, what will he eat it with?)

After lunch I ask to use the communal toilets. Given the modern nature of the jail, these are surprisingly filthy. All manner of unconfirmed waste is scattered on the walls. They remind me of the Teddy Hall toilets at Oxford.

Dear Diary

This is my first day in Wandsworth prison. I’m serving a sixteen month sentence for assaulting a national monument….

For anyone reading this I’m very sorry for what I did. I was high on drink and drugs and was suffering from the psychological distress of adopting a cretin as my new father (Dav).

These are my notes on the experience. Let these notes be passed down from hand-to-hand as a record of the ravages I am to experience in prison. Let people say ‘here lies a true soul, an honourable soul, an innocent soul.’

I ask only this from you— remember. 

Charlie Gilmour

11 am

I was brought into the jail yesterday morning. I arrived with a group of new inductees, most of them hardly children, barely having tasted life, too young to have the liberty snatched away from them. Guards lined the double doors, dressed in crisp black suits, batons at the ready. There was little conversation (a few whispers of ‘There’s the Cenotaph Destroyer,’ ‘Another Prick in the Wall,’ ‘Pink Floyd Jr’), for inside each of us was numb with grief.

Dav, my stepdad, told me before I came in “Be a man. Don’t show any emotion.” Well F*** you Dav I don’t care what you say! I broke down in floods of tears as I was led inside. They wrung the water from my face with a cloth, like I was a wilting Jesus. Am I not a man!

The screws took us into the holding room where my personal items (whistle, quill, Shelley’s ‘Necessity of Atheism’ pamphlet, mirror) were taken away. I was given some paper to write my details on. Beneath profession I wrote ‘Unacknowledged legislator of the world.’

They photographed me and gave me my prison ID card with my number on it. They also took away my clothes and gave me two grey jumpers, one pair of grey trousers, a dull white shirt and five pairs of prison socks and underwear. In one sudden swoop they removed all trace of my identity.

I was then patted down and asked to lift my testicles but not given a cavity search. If ever I get out I promise that guard will pay. 

This is a later entry describing my movements yesterday afternoon, the induction, arrival &c.

We were taken to the induction wing, a long, white corridor, clean but not too high, with a series of cast iron doors running along it.  A fat little inspector called Paul came in to give us the whole ‘Arbeit macht frei’ welcome speech.

A small boy next to me, he couldn’t have been older than 7, broke down in tears. This isn’t good. You can’t show weakness in this place, and he’ll be marked down as one of the weak from now on.

There was also a fusty old man—probably an academic or accountant—who looked in a serious state of shock. His hand was trembling as he sat there. He’s probably never seen a world like this. He reminded me of Beaky (my history teacher) who was the only kind soul I ever met at Eton. Often would we walk around the grounds discussing Pliny the Elder and laughing at the exploits of Quintus (Quinte, Quinto, Quitinius—hahaha!). I wonder where he is now?

Following the induction I was led to my cell, a very cold, 5 feet by 5 feet cubicle. It’s on the second floor, B-wing. There is a desk, a monitor, a small TV showing four channels and a broken keyboard.

I’m sharing with a heroin addict called Darren. He’s in for petty crimes (stealing TVs, drugs, general agitation). I’ve got to say that I don’t trust him one bit. Earlier I caught him ferreting through my possessions which I keep in a yellow bag on the end of my bunk.

When I challenged him about it he said he’d dropped his cigarette into the bag and was retrieving it. A likely story. I’ll be keeping a close eye on him. There’s quite a few ratty chancers in here who I’ll have to keep my eyes on.

And you, dear diary, will be my companion, my record, my solace. With you in my hand I need no one else. As Shelley once said: “A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”

And so to sleep, sweet sleep.