Criminal Justice

I have delayed the writing of this tonight because of course the thrilling extra-special Sunday night Trial edition of The Archers was on.

I announced on the taxi rank that I did not wish to be disturbed, poured a cup of tea and wound the windows up.

I was briefly disturbed when some inconvenient people got in the taxi and wanted to go somewhere. They tried unsuccessfully to make conversation during the journey but gave up when I ignored them and firmly turned the radio up to drown them out.

When it finally finished I turned the radio off as the theme music tootled merrily into life, only to make the rather startling discovery that the music continued anyway.

This was because Mark and Number Two Daughter, who were also on the taxi rank, were listening with rapt attention as well. Mark had not listened to all of it, but had switched it off halfway through when it became a bit upsetting, and then switched it back on again towards the end when he thought that the worst of the excitement might be over. Number Two Daughter has got nerves of steel and had listened to it all.

I thought it was all jolly upsetting, and hoped it was a bit improbable, surely most people are not quite as ghastly as the jurors that the Radio Four producers had imagined. If that is the case then I think that very definitely there should be an intelligence test before you are allowed to sit on a jury.

In fact I have never sat on one myself, although I have always quite liked the idea, mostly because of being very impressed with ‘Twelve Angry Men’ when it was on the television years ago. I am fairly sure I would be pretty good at arguing with people, having had quite a bit of practice.

I don’t think I would like to send anybody to prison, though, especially as Radio Four has had criminal justice as something of a theme today, and played poor Oscar Wilde’s awful De Profundis this afternoon.

It was a glorious sunny afternoon in Windermere. I opened the boot of the taxi and sat in the sunshine at the side of the lake, watching the world wagging past and trying to absorb as much Vitamin D as I could. I put the radio on and listened to it, caught up in the dreadfulness of his unspeakable sadness and his courage. He died just a few years after they let him out, and he wasn’t even as old as I am.

When it finished I turned the radio off and just sat thoughtfully in the bright sun for a little while, what a much better world we are living in now, how wonderful that we are trying to become gentler and more understanding.

It was a jolly good job that there were so many interesting things on the radio, because I am trying to distract myself from my preferred pastime of eating jelly babies, or chocolate, or peppermints in the taxi.

As I am sure I have mentioned, our increasingly rotund girths have become a matter for some concern recently. This is always the case at the end of the summer, because of spending several months sitting on the taxi rank eating jelly babies and not going swimming or cutting up firewood or digging the garden, or in fact doing anything which involves getting out of puff.

By September everything involves getting out of puff, and if it carries on for much longer I am going to struggle to reach over for the jelly babies without having a little rest on the way.

We are going to improve our lifestyle and tomorrow we are going to go swimming and eat wholemeal bread with our home made mayonnaise and butter and slabs of Wenslydale cheese, which should make a good start on the job.

Just thinking about it is making me long for a glass of wine.