My complicated life

On Tuesday of last week (24th March in fact), I sent out my normal weekly package of documents to Andrew for him to sift through and either use or file, whatever he decides is best. As usual I sent, as part of this package, pages from my document, 'An Abuse of Justice', which I have been sending out a chapter or section at a time for quite some time. How long can best be seen by pointing out that I have already sent out over 800 pages exactly like this one, typed and spaced the same. Let us say that there are roughly, on average, 500 words per page, that is a total in excess of 400,000 words. That's a lot of words - I didn't know that I knew that many. So, I put the package in the post and asked that it be sent by Recorded Delivery as I do every week.

It came back on Thursday 26th March with a bit of paper telling me that my mail had been stopped. This paper is neither signed nor dated but purports to come from a Governor Juden, though I don't think he knows anything at all about it. He can't, otherwise he would know that Legal Mail cannot be meddled with whether the censor likes the contents or not.

I think I'd better. at this juncture, say a few words about 'An Abuse of Justice'. Of course it is the title of my campaign, that's the first thing. Secondly, I am fed up with the prison service saying that there is no evidence of change in me as a person despite twenty-three years in prison and everything else that has happened. So, to counter this, and after discussing it with a very dear friend whose advice I cherished, I set about to write the full story of my arrest, trial, early struggle in jail, my change to education and the further changes in recent years - which have seen me become almost a Saint!

The plan was to get it all done (all taken, incidentally, from diaries which I have kept every day of that twenty-three years plus), have it edited, to remove any pointless waffle and other matter which is of little value to the object, and then to present it as the best proof of change imaginable. As I say, I have now reached almost 900 pages and all of the story concerning the bad stuff is done and sent out of the prison. The whole thing has become so long that I have found it necessary to split it into separate parts of 400 pages each. The story and evidence of all the bad things is done and gone. I am now writing about my educational period in what has become Part III of 'An Abuse of Justice'.

This aim makes it, in my view, a legal document - it is intended to provide the evidence of the changes in me that the Prison Service says it needs in order to progress me. I have to say that I do not blame the governor, who is named but who hasn't put his pen to the note - in fact nobody has put a pen to it or even bothered to date it. I'm sure that really it is all a bit of a misunderstanding and that it will sort itself out. Perhaps the fellow who did it has misunderstood the rule or whatever it may be that he sees as a reason for his action.

Why is my life so complicated all the time? I think it was Henry Thoreau who said:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

The Voice In The Wilderness