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THAT’S THE END OF THIS FACKING DIARY! ALL FUTURE CORRESPONDANCES WILL BE DIRECTED TO

https://charliegilmourletters.wordpress.com/

PAUL (The Warden HMPS)

The Final countdown

11pm

It is so quiet tonight. I can hear the wind blowing in the trees. All around is still, shrouded in a haunting silence. The clouds mass overhead, ready to break onto the earth. Occasionally I see glimpses of the moon. Her pale face shines sadly in the sky. This is it diary. This may be my last ever post. The rest is…….

11.45pm

15 minutes to go. I will be posting live updates of my escape on twitter @jailpoet…au revoir mes enfants

The Great Escape Part III

9pm

Wilf, my dear boy, has saved us! He returned twenty minutes ago clad in nothing but his bare bottom and traces of jam around his mouth. To say that we are delighted is the understatement of the day. How we dance with joy. This is what happened:

Unbeknown to us this Wilf is a real schemer. When he left us at 4pm it was with magnificent forethought and serendipitous premeditation in mind. It took him about an hour to squeeze his way through the ventilation shafts into the electricity grid. When there he followed the exact instructions laid upon him to turn the switch that renders the panel B8 moribund. He tells us that not a soul stirred in that room, all guards had their attention turned to the match.

“But why were you so late in returning,” we asked.

“Ah, well……”

On his way back Wilf stopped off at the pantry. This was no mealy-mouthed rations break, however. For this lovely boy had a plan. Indeed, Wilf had taken with him one of the bottles of amyl nitrates reserved for Michael, which he’d secreted in some cavity in his person. This he poured into the guards’ water supply, from which they will be drinking THIS VERY EVENING!!! Genius!

He says that he did this as a precaution for the escape, though now that we tell him our bad luck with the football match he is even more joyed at this twist of luck!!!

Hurrah to you Wilf. And you thoroughly deserved the strawberry dodgers you scoffed while in the pantry as reward for your sterling endeavours! Huzzah!

Already I can hear the guards dropping off outside, sloping under the nitrate weariness. Some have already retired to their mess. That is except Michael. Now we must deal with him.

9.30pm

Michael down. He came in wittering something ludicrous about how no one in the jail seemed interested in him anymore. The guards were all partying or taking showers, he said, which surprised him given the ill mood they were in before, and he’d been left to patrol the corridors alone. He’d just sat down and started scattering flakes on the bed when Daz offered him the handkerchief to mop his brow with. He was asleep within fifteen seconds. We have taken his clothes and stashed his body under the bunks for now. All that remains is one final check of the tunnel. I will go down myself.

9.45pm

The tunnel is weak. I was scattered with a few drops of sediment as I passed under. But it will have to do. Now we wait. ‘Tis a full moon outside and the rain has started to fall. Let fair fortune guide us.

The Great Escape Part II

7pm

Despair. Its over. Everything has gone wrong. There will be no escape.

We won the football match. How it happened I don’t know. But it did and now the screws are infuriated. Guards have been doubled. They storm about the corridors banging on cell doors, rustling our cages like we are birds. Paul has instigated a jail-wide clamp down, no dinner nor sosh. His lack of skill and wanton cruelty on the pitch has been magnified off it this evening.

And that is not all. For we have lost Wilf. He slipped off into the ventilation shaft at 4pm and never returned. I can only surmise that, despite all the margarine we rubbed onto him,  his tiny body is stuck somewhere in the tunnels. We do not know if he completed the task. I fear his oily body will one day be discovered wedged into a tight space, his poor spectacles hanging off pinky nose. Here’s to you you martyr!

8.20 pm– Later that evening

Tonight upon a midnight dreary, after football weak and weary, 

I pondered over curious dreams of escape drawn before,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my cell-chamber door.

`’Tis some visitor,’ Daz muttered, `tapping at our chamber door’ –

Before spitting on the floor.

 Deep into that darkness peering, long we stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no cellmates ever dreamed before;

Into this midnight gloom, came a shape into the room,

A little face greased in butter, his hands aglow his heart aflutter

A thing of beauty, had done its duty, O and much more.

WILF walked in the door!!!!!!!

The Football Match

First Half

Half time. Still nil-nil. Walliams the idiot was injured and sloped off after 15 minutes. The screws are turning. I feel as if I have been clobbered from head to foot. One chance but it went down. No time to chat. Here, I pass you, dear diary, to Walliams. He will record the second half. Or you may follow my fellow Will Paternoster on twitter (@jailpoet) who is tweeting (twatting?) from the second floor where he has a view of the pitch.

Walliams?!

Second Half– by David Walliams

David’s eyes had a fire surrounding them, as though burnt in the caverns of hell. Yes he was already the captain, a rakish mop of blonde hair, fastest runner over 100 metres in the school, he had played like Apollo himself. And yet glory would not be his. He had been scythed down in his magnificence. He couldn’t remember much– there was a cross, he had risen to meet it when out of nowhere three or four grim shapes smashed into his delicate frame sending him tumbling off the pitch. DW rose, bravely trying his best to carry on but it was no use, his leg was gone. They had smashed it the brutes. He hobbled off but refused the sanctuary of the hospital, instead choosing to support his teammates and take notes for his good friend CJBG.

Now his team mates stood in abeyance to his magnificent fury.

By half time the field was a steaming quagmire, innocence and blood knocked into one another. No one had yet scored. There was high drama in the third quarter as the knave of Norshire, Peter Brown, placed a suspiciously illegal ball into the corner flag, giving rise to a spectacular punch-up. But all in all things went rather smoothly.

It remained nil-nil with but a shade over two minutes to play. CJBG looked disconcerted. This was a lot harder than he had expected. He had only touched the ball twice, and both times he had been flattened by the opposition. The pace of running which David had set so furiously in the first half, had taken its toll on him, and he puffed furiously trying to keep up with the action. Still a voice inside drove him on, told him that he couldn’t quit, there was one final twist left to the game, he was sure of it.

Suddenly the ball flew out of a scrum straight into the feet of Wandsworth’s running back, the wily Achilles. Nimbly the boy skipped forward, dodging an advancing Blooder, and tore off into the open space on the left. His legs glid over the turf leaving iridescent trails in their wake. The line was at his mercy, plain grass infront of him, when WHOOMMP, a body (Paul) flew into the tackle from his blind side and pitched him ten feet into the air. The ball spiraled up, hung in the sky for a brief second, as though trying to fly off, then tumbled down, straight at the feet of a brutally discomposed CJBG.

Charlie looked around and noticed both teams standing behind him, as though a wave ready to break on his head. Directly infront of him stood the goal.

“Boot the bugger,” shouted Flashfoot.

“Runnn,” the booming voice of Subtelty-Brown echoed out as though in slow motion.

“To me, to me,” pleaded Sparrow, who had crept up beside CJBG, his body twitching squirrellike, in a bid to seal victory for the team. In his huge excitement Charley heard three voices at once, and his mind split into three different directions. In the blink of an eye he turned to face Sparrow, whose eyes lit up in a flash of expectation, lifted the ball off the ground, and kicked it as hard as he could.

Bunfff.

The ball flew straight at Sparrow’s gleaming head, knocking him to ground and, without bouncing, flew into the net.

GOAAAALLLLLLLLL

Twenty stupid jailbirds charged at Charley, half in disbelieving joy, the other half in disbelieving anger. Charley gazed at the touchline where he saw a goggle-eyed Plotonimus staring hard at him. The boys heckled round him like a shoal of fish, pecking. In arms, boy-by-boy, they danced back to the pavilion toasting the idiot goal. Victory out of despair.

The Great Escape

Dear Diary

The hour is at hand. Today is the big day. Both Daz and Wilf slept the sleep of death last night and yet I, for some reason, found sleep harder to come by than any day in my life. Strange.

9am: A light breakfast of gruel and rice crackers and some sosh with the inmates. Daz and Wilf have been chattering away. I remain guardedly aloof. There is a meeting of the football team in a couple of hours. I will be posting regular updates throughout the day to track our progress.

11am: Team briefing. Evil is a man named Paul. The chief warden sneers at us with malevolent eyes. The guards look ready to break our bones. Daz and I look back at them with mock trepidation. If only you knew.

12pm: Lunch. A double helping of slop, gruel and bread rolls. Lord I even ate my rice pudding. We will need all our energies.

1pm: Daz, Daz Daz! Lovely Seneschal, somnolent subservient! Daz has procured us half a tub of margarine to spread on our bodies for the journey out. This is excellent fare. We will now be able to slip through the tightest crack, the narrowest bars! Ha, ha fortune favors the brave.

3.40pm: Final preparations for the football game. Wilf has been covered in margarine and stowed away in Winter’s kitbag. He squirms like a basted piglet in oven….but I have faith in the lad. A few players are meeting to discuss tactics. Walliams is here, his hulking presence crowding our cell. He should surely have been in nets. I will take a pen and paper down to the match that I can make notes at halftime and onwards. God save the Queen!

A late meeting

It was a dark and stormy night. Outside, tormenting winds blew the trees into a frenzy. Gates shuddered, men ran indoors and even dead man’s tree on Hampstead Heath was deserted.

Inside a black-barred room three shadowy conspiritors sat huddled under the light of a dim bulb, 35 watts. Whispers were exchanged, hands wrung and Wilf shed some tears. The conversation moved from escape, to black revenge, to dark deeds, to  Peter Cook’s great performance at the Secret Policeman’s Ball and back to escape.

This is the substance of the conversation:

“Are the heads ready?”

“Check.”

“Lubrication.”

“Check.”

“What about Michael?”

“Drugs.”

“Cake?”

“Handkerchief.”

“What time’s Judge Judy on?”

“12 pm”

“Stop crying Wilf it won’t hurt.”

“God I hate Dave Cameron.”

“Who’s that?”

“The prime minister of the UK.”

“Balaclavas.”

“Fashioned them out of socks.”

“Tobacco heads.”

“Check.”

“Nice detail on the eyes. Rations?”

“Gruel.”

“Books, reading material?”

“…..”

Wilf, Daz and Charles Julius Bysshe were in conversation. To decipher–

The football match begins at 4pm tomorrow. We will smuggle Wilf into the changing rooms in Winter Plotonimus’s kitbag. He will be presmeared in a form of unsaturated lubrication. He has two hours to complete the mission (detailed yesterday). Following the football match we will carry Wilf back to our cell and add the final details to the tunnel. The hole, under the toilet, has been shaped to fit three oily bodies though there remains a chance of cave-ins. To that end we have devised an ingenious bridge technique, which involve us sliding forwards on our backs and swallowing any particles of dirt that fall from the ceiling. Daz will go first.

At 9pm we will invite Michael, who is on the night shift as usual, into our cells.  Unbeknown to him we have doused a handkerchief in several jars of amyl nitrate with which we will drug him into a deep frenzy. Once we have snuffed his lights out we will each take an item of his clothing– Daz the cap and shirt, I the jacket and Wilf, his trousers and tie. Out of the tunnel and the first to exit, Daz will scuttle over to the unelectrified fence and cut a small mansize hole for the three of us to crawl through. The fence is approximately 60 metres away, we will have to avoid the spotlights and dash for the forest.

Now we wait. It is a full moon tomorrow. I believe in miracles.

Day 44– One day until the Escape

“What if all the birds in England started to sing all at once?”

– CJBG

Dear Diary,

Tomorrow is the big day. The lags versus screws football match and the day of our escape. And yet I have presentiments of doom. Last night I dreamed that I was being carried away by a huge crow. It carried me in its beak and swept me away. What could it mean? I have put up the teamsheet here. God speed.

Day 42– The Escape Plans

Diary

What a weekend. We have been scurrying hither and thither with our preparations to escape. As I mentioned last week, the football game is to be held on Wednesday and will be the scene of the most daring operation since Tinker Jackson had his pants removed in his sleep, Eton, summer, 2005.

The set up is thus–

1. Tunnel– the tunnel runs from under our toilet through the main yard and stops just underneath the camp gates. As anybody who has visited Wandsworth knows the jail is surrounded by a mesh of electrified chicken wire. Cutting through an unelectrified fence would be tricky enough, but we, my dear, dear journal, also have to find a way of removing said voltage lest it electrocute our worthy forms and send us all to our fates in a crispy frazzle. Thus comes the second part– the football game.

2. The football– we have chosen this as the break electric moment. Now, the chances of winning the football game are, of course, inexistent. This game has been created as a sop for the guards to beat several shades of colour out of their most disliked prisoners (so you could imagine why X was brought into the team last Thursday). But for us escapees it is a dream come true. In another act of cruelty Paul has forced us to use the cold, dirty boiler area as our changing room. He forgets that the same area is the source of the ventilation funnels running throughout the jail, one of which leads directly to the electricity grid. These ventilation funnels would, of course, be unnavigable for any mere mortal. However Wilf is no mere human. Like a circus monkey, his puny body fits into the tightest of spaces. Moreover, Daz, my lovely cellmate, has procured five tubs of margarine that Wilf can smear over his person, giving him the friction qualities of a buttered eel. All that’s required is for one of us to smuggle him into the boiler area in our kitbag. He weill then crawl to the grid where he is to neutralise just one panel of the fence for us to cut our way through. For that we have prepared the following.

3. Tobacco heads. We have fashioned three of these heads to lay on our beds come nightfall. Despite the football victory at least one of the screws will feel it incumbent on himself to peep into our cells that evening. However, I am of the belief that Bert will, for once, but glance inside, and carry on with his midnight festivities with the other guards.

4. Uniform- unbeknowest to him I have been putting my conversations with Michael to good use. He never realised how, that same day that he carried me back from the solitary cell, I purloined his trust. We intend to drug him and each of us to steal an item of his uniform to carry with us into the great outdoors.

5. The Great outdoors– getting out of the prison walls will be hard enough. But surviving the great outdoors will be harder still. As anyone who has been to the Borough of Wandsworth Prison will know, the place is set in a verdant location, rolling hills cascade in the distance, while a green forest surrounds it on three sides. Our only real chance of surviving capture once we are out will be to run for the forest. There we should be able to find some shelter among the trees and leaves.

I have practise in the art of survival which I learnt in the Eton cadets. I spent many an unhappy evening on the military runs, 20 pounds on my back, left-righting our cadet leader, the odious Sir Martin Jagger . They taught us how to change a rifle (Eton rifles), make up our bunk beds so that you could bounce a 50 pence piece on it like a rubber ball on concrete, and camouflage. I never thought it would come in useful but voila, even poets need outdoor survival skills.

Escape hour is 11.59pm on October 12th– a full moon. Daz, Wilf and I stand at the ready. Escape or death….servitude is not an option.

Day 40– Five days before Escape

Our plans to escape hatch like a lambent egg. The tunnel has been cleared of all dirt and is now wide enough for three men to fit in end to end. It begins from the U-bend under the toilet and stretches through the courtyard.

There is, of course, the risk of being showered with faecal matter. However it is a risk I am willing to take. I have watched Shawshanks Redemption– now that was one tough cookie (apologies diary, but the influence of America Day still lingers).

I hear of a new war– ‘the war on spitting.’ The instigator of this, a Mr Bond, Chris Bond, tells us that rioting and spitting are willing bedfellows. ’You’d be locked up,’ I told Daz, good humouredly. He failed to grasp the irony and merely spat on the floor.

X is now following me on twitter. He has called himself XinJail. I humour him.