Busy doing nothing..

What happens when life as you know it stops and you have time to think?

Patiently waiting for her to grow….

I once watched a BBC 4 documentary about inmates in a Russian gulag. I say once. I watched it twice. It was on ‘after hours’. Those hours when mums should be in bed but have salvaged a moment’s peace and will risk complete exhaustion the next morning just to savour an hour of ‘alone’ time.

As you would expect the documentary was harrowing. Which perhaps says something about me that I watched it twice. One inmate made a lasting impression on me. In fact, I think that’s why I watched it again.

The prisoner, Peter, was confined to his cell twenty-four hours a day. I can’t remember his crime, or even if it was stated but I can’t think of any crime that befits his particularly cruel punishment. Despite being confined to his cell he was not allowed to sit down for twelve hours of every day. Not on the bed. Not on the chair. He was made to pace. Up and down. Up and down. All day. Under the watchful gaze of a rotation of prisoner guards.

When interviewed Peter astounded me. Smiling, slightly excited even, he told the interviewer that (and I am paraphrasing) there just wasn’t enough hours in the day. He said time flew so quickly and he had so much ‘mental work’ to do but before he knew it the day had flown by and his mental ‘to do’ list was left untouched. Poor Peter was clearly psychotic, dissociated, delusional, suffering beyond belief. I have never forgotten him. In fact, I was thinking about him this week.

You can always be assured of my honesty dear reader and recently, to be honest I have felt overwhelmed. Mercifully, unlike Peter, I am not confined to the torture of the gulag. I live in a small Victorian terrace house, close to an array of shops and a sprawling park. I am lucky. Grateful. And in many senses as free as a bird.

But I don’t feel free.