Is there anybody out there?

I've got a little black book with my poems in,
I've got a bag with a toothbrush and comb in;
When I'm a good dog they sometimes throw me a bone in.

I've got elastic bands keeping my shoes on,
I've got those 'swollen-hand' blues;
I've got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from.
 
I've got electric light,
And I've got second sight,
I've got amazing powers of observation.

And that is why I know, when I try to get through
On the telephone to you,
There'll be nobody home.

(Pink Floyd)

Well, as any regular reader will be fully aware by now, I've got no news and nothing to tell anyone because, as usual here at the Lazy L, bugger all has happened.

I'm on the waiting list!

Often I sit here in my committee-designed and government-owned kennel-cum-toilet, surrounded by my solitude, and wonder if there is anyone actually out there at all!

Am I alone?

All around me in their own kennels there are so many sad tales and you can be absolutely certain that they too feel alone and abandoned. It's not true of course - we all (well, most of us) have friends and family who care about us - but it's hard to believe at night. In the cells of the Lazy L, nobody hears you screaming because the screaming is just inside your own head. I've said this before, of course, but it's worth repeating - Nicolas Sarkozy once said:

Life is the same for everyone when you are alone at night in an empty room.

I'm tired of being alone in empty rooms, but there's very little I can do about it apart from wait, like a good little patient, for the waiting list to reduce slowly. Sooner or later they will come to my cell door in the dead of night and tell me to pack up my goods and chattels and prepare for a road-trip the following day. It will happen - nothing lasts forever - but after all of the years with very little hope of any real progress, to finally have my lips within touching distance of drinking from the cup at last and yet my neck muscles can't quite manage that final millimetre, it's exasperating. Of course I stretch the tongue to try to cover that final distance but even a lizard would strutggle against the Prison Service, and I'm no lizard - I'm the wrong colour.

Boudica is finding it probably marginally more difficult than I am because, way back in May when we first found out that I had been recommended for open conditions by the Parole Board, she was delighted - full of plans and ideas and expectations. Now, over four months later and not an inch of progress, she is becoming a little disillusioned - and who can blame her? Well, all I can tell her is that they can break the clock but they can't stop the time. It will happen, it will come to pass, as they put it in the bible.

Until it does, all I can do of course is sit here like a good little convict and patient. Well, let's face it, these places are just like big loony-bins anyway - and if it wasn't for the uniforms, it would be difficult to decide who the inmates were. I have come to the conclusion that waiting for this place to get off its collective is much like being homosexual - a pain in the arse.

The Voice In The Wilderness