The hosts of error

There isn't a lot to say about the last week beyond the fact that there has been a little bit of snow which brought the country to a standstill and improved family relationships because parents got to stay off work and build snowmen with the children. As far as the case is concerned, there is no news beyond the fact that my solicitor informs me that I will be represented at the parole hearing on March 12th by Chris Williams, Barrister at Law of Tooks Chambers.

Having nothing to report gets me to thinking about the past week and the fact that here in Whitemoor we seem to have spent a good deal of the time in idleness because of the snow. Well, it seems that on some days only half of the staff could find their way to work - it can't he easy navigating the flatlands around this place.

One day during the week, (Thursday 5th I think) I was sitting here in my comfy little kennel doing not very much when one of the fellows arrived to have a chat. (They do it quite a bit and I put up with it because they often need a bit of advice and advice costs nothing.) So, this fellow arrived, a youngster in his twenties with the modern outlook of "I love me, who do you love?" They all seem to be extraordinarily self-centered for some reason. They go to the gym and spend most of their time just posing in front of the mirrors and kissing themselves. Surely I wasn't that silly when I was that age! But I probably was.

Anyway, this fellow came in and, after the usual sort of greetings about this and that, he got himself settled down to ask the question that had really brought him to the oracle in the first place, ­ the question I get asked several times each week by youngsters: "Will my sentence go quick?"

I would love to be able to wave a magic wand for them but the fact is that Gandalf, Merlin and Harry Potter are all fictional - there are no magic wands. So, I gave him the usual platitudes that I trot out most of the time and off he went to kiss himself in the mirror in the gymnasium - and I was left to do a bit of thinking and soul-searching, as usual.

I have to say that for the early part of my sentence, eight or nine years or so in fact, I fought the system tooth and nail, because I didn't have the sense God gave a duck. I thought I was fighting my case, but there is a world of difference hetween fighting a case and fighting the system. It took me a long time to realise that, (not to mention years of study and the application of rational thought rather than the 'Mad-Bull-In-A-China-Shop' approach).

Sitting thinking about it caused me to become quite sanguine about it all and I found myself wondering and asking myself just how DID I do it? And am still doing it in fact, although these days I have my priorities in order and know where the fight has to be aimed - and it's not at prison staff who have nothing to do with the case.

I asked myself, "How come I am so determined to obtain the justice that is mine by right of Magna Carta, Law and Human Rights Legislation? How have I done it?" Then I remembered
the American politician William Jennings Bryan, who died in 1925 - but not before he had said:

The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the Hosts of Error.

Ah! That's how.

The Voice In The Wilderness