I am having a peaceful evening.
I am making a very late start to writing my diary, because I have got a splendid book to read, and have been idly reading it instead of enthusiastically diving under the seat to dig out my computer and write.
Apart from having tiresomely small print, at which I am having to squint through my old lady glasses, the book is brilliant, and better still, has pictures.
I like pictures. They are a lovely serendipitous thing in a book for grown-ups.
It is the book which comes before the audio books that we save for long journeys in the camper van. They are the huge books that have been made into the film of A Game Of Thrones, and they are ace. This one is especially ace, because although I don’t exactly know what happens in the end, it is a prequel, so I know what happens afterwards.
I don’t like books that you have got to race through with your heart pounding anxiously, because you are worrying about the end. Knowing that everybody in the book will be dead before the beginning of the next book a hundred years later is oddly tranquil, and the reading is giving me a quiet feeling of contentment.
It has been a satisfying sort of day. Mark has been building a workbench in his shed. His garden rebuilding activities seem to have ground to a bit of a halt whilst I have been flapping about worrying about my career choices this week. He has had to do a lot of patient listening and proffering of advice for me to ignore.
Today he wanted to get on with it, because he has got to go and install rural broadband for the rest of the week. I thought that I would probably be all right by myself, so he put his winter overalls on and went outside to reconstruct the garden.
I did not mind this.
I ironed my prison uniform and put it away in the wardrobe. I thought that really I felt a bit sad. I liked HMP Slade very much. It is encouraging to be in a place where it is easy to make a difference to people’s lives, even with just a few words or a bit of patient acceptance, and I would have liked to stay.
All the same I have found it very troubling.
I did not know if I wanted to work in a place where everybody would be suspicious of me all the time.
I thought that I was perhaps becoming a bit obsessive about this, and wondered if I ought just to put it all behind me, forget about it all and get on with my life.
It is a perfectly good life, as you know. It has made me very contented for a long time.
All the same, I have thought and thought about HMP Slade, and filled these pages with endless dull ramblings on the subject. I have kept myself awake at nights and given myself indigestion during the day.
I am not sure that even HMP Slade is worth mouth ulcers and headaches.
As it happened, Number One Daughter rang up whilst I was having this very thought.
She is quite good at this sort of problem, because of being in the Army. The Army is not much like the prison service, but it is working for the Government, and so the same sort of rules apply.
She thought that it was all a bit of a storm in a teacup.
She suggested that I should leave it all alone for a little while, and then in a week or so, I should write to them pointing out that I want the prison service to be good and humane and brilliant just as much as they do, and that I am not a secret saboteur.
She reminded me that if I want to work there then I should not just be sloping about at home feeling quietly regretful. She said that I ought to pull myself together and do the best things that I could to make it happen. She thought that if I went back it would probably be horrid to start off with, but that I am quite brave enough to ignore horrid, and that people would get used to me and that it would probably turn out all right in the end.
This was a revelation to me. I had just accepted, resignedly, that I am unemployable after all, and not thought to do anything about it.
She is very sensible, and I felt thoroughly encouraged.
In fact she had called to talk to me about an Inspirational Talk that she is due to give at Lucy’s school later this week. She sent me some pictures, of her doing Inspirational Things, like running about dragging tractor tyres.
I did not feel terribly inspired by that bit. I felt uncomfortably guilty because I get out of breath if I run to the end of the alley, and have not been to the gym for ages.
It looks as though it is going to be a splendid talk, and I keep wondering if I could slope off to Yorkshire and find an excuse to get in to school and listen.
I think she should talk to them about not being unemployable as well. I found that advice jolly useful.
I have attached a photograph because I like pictures, and think that even the Prison Service would not worry about this one, largely because you can’t really tell what it is.
It is going to be Mark’s new workbench. It is standing on its side being shaped and bashed and made perfect.
He is very clever.
I am very fortunate to have my family.
