I am often asked what I write in my letters to a man on death row. Bill has impressed upon me that letters are a prisoner’s lifeline. They are excitedly awaited and the joy of receiving communication from a ‘living being’ is indescribable.
About two years ago, I sent Bill a letter regaling him with descriptions of what was going on in my garden and what was happening out here in suburban Surrey. It was an innocuous letter, one that recorded simple details of the greedy, fat robin; the thieving squirrel; the 1920′s gangster magpies with violin-cases tucked under their wings; the crows who strut around like Mick Jagger; the wood-pigeons who all look like Alfred Hitchcock, and so-on. The narrative was interspersed with twelve, small images of our garden, and its various inhabitants, embedded into the pages (4 to an A4 page). It made for an amusing letter. Bill would have loved it and would have immediately entered into the spirit, responding in kind and thus providing opportunities for future pleasurable exchanges of correspondence .
Two weeks later, I received notification from Bill that the letter had not been delivered to him but had been shredded in front of him, destroyed because it contained more than 10 photos, which is the maximum that can be included in a letter. He was offered the choice of paying for the ‘postage and administration’ so that the letter could be ‘returned to sender’ but he didn’t have enough money. So they destroyed it.
Bill was utterly crushed.
I was outraged. For pity’s sake, they weren’t even proper photos! More than anger though, was the profound sadness that I experienced on pondering ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’
Can you conceive a mindset that could entertain delivering such a dismissive act of casual cruelty?
Possibly not.
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