You can't wind up a broken clock

By the time anyone reads this I will have had my parole hearing and it will all be over bar the shouting, as my ould Grandmother would have said. She said a lot of things - most of them made little sense as far as I could see. She was an old-fashioned countrywoman and as Victorian as they come. She died in 1987 at the age of ninety­-six which would put her year of birth in 1891 - and THAT'S Victorian. Anyway, I digress, as usual, but one of her sayings was, "As long as the sparrows are singing, ye'll nivver need a warm coat."

So, by the time anyone reads this, the parole hearing will be over and I will be waiting patiently for the answer. (Some folk think I AM a patient, but we will ignore them.)

However, I find that I am to have what could well amount to a sort of dress-rehearsal because the day before my hearing I have got what is called an INTERNAL RISK ASSESSMENT MEETING (IRMT) at which some of the same people will attend, including The SS.

I will (apparently) be given five minutes at the beginning of the IRMT to address the following points:

• Identify your risk factors.
• Identify how you manage your risk factors.
• How do you spend your time currently in open conditions?
• What do you want to achieve from open conditions?

It's like stepping back twenty years! But never mind.

So, I shall turn up there at the appointed time and have my five minutes in the spotlight then wander off to allow the panel to decide what they will say to the Parole Board the following day. Actually, I think it is all merely to see how I can be managed on release to the hostel, or something like that - nothing to get worked up about or excited about.

One of the boys said yesterday, "They might be just trying to wind you up!"

I replied, "Ha! You can't wind up a broken clock."

Sometimes that's precisely what I feel like - a broken clock. The problem I've got, and it has bugger-all to do with risk factors - or any other sort of factors - is that basically, right down to the very marrow of my bones, I am tired. I've had enough. It's as simple as that really. Risk factors, problem-solving and all the rest of the psycho-babble, count for nothing once a fellow gets to the stage when he realises that life is too short for all of that sort of thing.

In the days when I saw everyth1ng as a challenge and willingly took it all on, I thought I was invincible and that I would live forever. Then, one day, I woke up and suddenly I was sixty years old and had no idea where it had all gone to! I have things to read! Things to write! I don't have all that much time to do it all in neither!  So I have no time for risk factors or anything else. I still have ambitions and dreams to be fulfilled and not a lot of time to do it in. Being retired will help, provided I can find myself a calm, quiet corner somewhere to get on with it.

Oh well, we will see I suppose. But in the meantime, and by the time anyone reads this, the parole hearing will be over.

It's been a long, dreary road to get this far and, as I mentioned earlier - I'm tired.

The Voice In The Wilderness