The creeks and inlets are filling

Arthur Hugh Clough wrote:

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making
Comes silent, flooding in, the Main.

It is a verse from his poem "Say Not The Struggle Nauqht Availeth". Well, for many many years I could identify with it, but these days things seem to have speeded up a little bit at last - FINALLY!

Oh I was always aware that people were working away to assist me in the background and behind the scenes, but there seemed to be little to show for it all. However, in recent times it seems that the tide has certainly turned and the tired waves are finally filling the creeks and inlets - ticking the correct boxes - and the Main is silently reaching high tide.

Last week I wrote that I had been given the paperwork which effectively seemed to be a get-out-of-jail pass - a recommendation for  my release - all we were therefore waiting for was a date for the Parole Board hearing.

I've got that date now - March 5th. That is just over five weeks away and, as far as I know, there is a bed already for me at the hostel.

So, provided that fickle ould whore Lady Luck minds her own business and concentrates her vindictive attention elsewhere, I will be finally released a couple of weeks after the hearing, so I expect to be a relatively free man around mid-March.

Wonderful! Not before time too.

On March 5th I shall be four days short of twenty-seven years in the dubious hospitality of Lizzie Windsor and her minions - it's enough. Even for a guilty man, it's enough.

So, watch this space. I expect developments soon.

I've seen a fox!

The other day, mid-week, I was wandering through the snowy fields when a large, grey dog-fox sprang up about thirty or forty feet in front of me and went running off along the dyke in that gait only a fox can use. I followed it, of course, and found its prints where it had gone to ground in a bramble bush.

Foxes are all very well, but they can take animals, lambs and hens and other small creatures, so I made it my business to put the fox OUT of business. I started following trails and tracks to discover where its den was, and saw the vixen the following day. That meant that there was a fair chance of cubs too, somewhere. I found the den and wanted to put a snare up to catch the fox but that's not allowed - seeing as it wasn't on prison land it was even more frowned upon.

"Find the den," I was told. "We will block the holes and gas it."

"Found it," said I, "but it's not on prison land."

"Not a thing we can do about it then," was the reply.

End of my fox-hunting episode. The fox is safe as far as I am concerned.

The tired waves may be breaking for me and slowly filling the creeks and inlets, but as far as the fox is concerned Arthur Hugh Clough was barking up the wrong creek and inlet and the tide is a long way from shore.

Still, once I am gone from here, if the fox should begin to be a problem, it won't be mine.

My trouble is that I actually like foxes. I see them as the under-dog, and being an under-dog myself for so long, I sympathise. After all, it's just doing its thing really.

Aaaah - say not the struggle naught availeth.

The Voice In The Wilderness