Sundays down here at Feltham tend to be pretty mundane – much like any other day really. Six hours in the factory making brown bunting for Gordon Brown’s inauguration in January, two square meals, time for just one game of pool before lights out … oh and afternoon classes in Why Women Should Be Entitled To Have Their Cake And Eat It And All Men Are Bastards [Level 2 in the Harriet Harman Positive Action GCSE exam] and How New Labour Never Get It Wrong Even When They Have Really.

It turns out that passing the exam in the second of these subjects – though a condition of being released back into Society even when you have completed your sentence – is not as difficult as it first seemed in prospect upon our arrival. It’s a bit like that playground game we used to play at primary school called Simon Says. All you have to do, in discussing Britain’s history over the past twenty years up to the current day is to cheer whenever you hear a reference to Gordon Brown doing or saying anything … but then boo whenever anyone is said to have disagreed with – or even hinted that they may not entirely accept – anything that Gordon Brown has ever said or done. I’m pleased to record that, after considerable effort, my performances are gradually improving. In yesterday’s test I got a C Plus. My tutor told me that if I keep up the good work I should sail through my final examination in five weeks’ time. What he doesn’t know of course is that – if my new responsibilities on the Escape Committee work out as hoped & intended – I may not be still be here to take it!

In the evening a small cadre of rugby fans gathered in front of the television in the recreation room to watch our beloved Columbinas perform once more to a sell-out crowd at the Stoop. Such is their fame these days that they even appear – albeit fleetingly, i.e. for about two nanoseconds – in the title sequence of Sky Sport’s weekly magazine programme The Rugby Club. Staying at the top in this most demanding of activities is ultimately a matter of sheer dedication & hard work. It takes considerable commitment to prance out to the centre of the field on a bitterly cold last day of November dressed in nothing but lycra, pom-poms & shiny PVC boots and, after practically no warm-up at all, immediately go into the splits on turf resembling the sodden, forbidding landscape of a First World War battlefield. Despite the commendable variety of Sky Sports camera angles, the studio discussions of the pundits and the slow-mo video replays, there is still of course nothing to match the magic of actually being there to witness the Columbinas in the flesh. If I’m being completely truthful this is the only aspect of the outside world that I really miss here in the Ed Balls Correction Centre. I had little sleep overnight revisiting in my mind the issues of whether the flattery & sense of adventure that caused me to accept my position on the Escape Committee is something for which I am really prepared to gamble my release date. With my months’ remission for agreeing to the electric shock treatment, if I keep my nose clean from now on, I could be out before the second week in January – why am I risking another four weeks in clink (and possibly more on top) just to restore the principles of Justice, Freedom & Democracy in Britain … a cause which so few of us - according to the latest polls - seem to care about?