Monday
I’ve been sent an advance proof of The Secret Barrister, which the publishers hope will do next year for the legal profession what the several books written by doctors have done this year to expose the problems in the NHS. Its stories of how the law often fails those whom it is meant to protect – how do barristers feel when someone they believe to be innocent gets banged up for five years? – make for gripping reading and chimed with the one time I got to see the process close up, while on jury service. The case was a drug dealing charge, and when our deliberations got under way the foreman began by asking every member of the jury what our initial thoughts were on the guilt or innocence of the accused to see how far apart we all were. This all went well until one juror announced that one defendant was probably innocent, but his accomplice was definitely guilty. We had to point out there was only one defendant and that the man the juror was trying to send to prison was his interpreter.
Tuesday
Investments and me don’t have the best of track records as I’ve yet to find one on which I am incapable of losing money. In one of the many jobs for which I had little enthusiasm and even less aptitude before I started writing in my early 30s, I spent nine months selling people insurance plans they didn’t want and almost certainly didn’t need. Including myself, as I managed to sell myself the world’s worst endowment policy, which never came close to paying off our mortgage. I would probably have had a good case for suing myself for mis-selling. So it’s probably just as well that I never got the bitcoin habit as I could almost certainly guarantee I would have ended up in the same state as James Howells from Newport, south Wales. Howells bought early in the game and with bitcoin now skyrocketing in value to more than $10,000, he is sitting on a stash worth $75m. Unfortunately, he can’t get his hands on a single penny of his fortune because he threw away his old computer some years back. The hard drive containing the password to allow him to access his account is lying under several thousand tonnes of landfill.
Wednesday
In the last week, two people I know have killed themselves. The news, though shocking and deeply upsetting, didn’t come as a total surprise as both had made suicide attempts in the past, and had made little secret of their desire to die. I now count myself fortunate that in my many periods of poor mental health I haven’t become consumed with a desire to kill myself, though there were times when I considered it more of a curse because knowing I didn’t have that option meant I was forced to endure the crushing agony of depression with no knowledge that it would ever pass. Which isn’t to say that I never thought about killing myself. I did and still do, frequently, though always in an abstract way rather than as an expression of intent. When I was on the psychiatric ward, I was asked nearly every day if I had thought about killing myself in the past 24 hours and my reply was always the same. How could someone not go through a day without at least considering it? It seemed to me that one of the things that makes us human is the knowledge that we have some agency over our existence, and that the real dangers lie in not talking about the possibility.
Thursday
Serena Williams’ Twitter pleas for help with looking after a baby who was teething and wouldn’t sleep brought back memories of my wife and I bringing our own children back from hospital and realising we really didn’t have a clue what we were supposed to be doing. I’ve often thought our children taught us how to be parents every bit as much as we helped them to stay alive. Things became a lot easier when they could talk and verbalise what they wanted and though they were, of course, utterly adorable as kids I find them much more fun now they are adults. They are still every bit as stressful, mind. It’s just that the stresses are of a different order. Wondering where they are, whether they are OK and being so pleased to get a text from them that I don’t mind if it contains a demand with menaces for cash.
Friday
One of the many privileges of my job is that I get to observe the people running the country close up on a daily basis, and I spend more time than is probably healthy for me contemplating what is going on in their inner worlds. What they are really feeling about their own failures and disappointments. So I am currently not sure whether to be impressed by the prime minister’s resilience or concerned for her delusional state of mind. On a flight from Poland to Cyprus on Thursday night, she told journalists that 2017 hadn’t really been too bad a year for her. To recap briefly, she managed to single-handedly turn a 20-point lead in the opinion polls into losing seats at the general election in June., after which she was on the point of resigning – a fact she has now forgotten, apparently – until the Tory party realised there was no one better. She conceded almost every point in the first round of the EU negotiations and is now insisting she can get a deal that isn’t on offer. And she was forced to sack three members of her cabinet. I would hate to be around her when things get really grim.
Digested week, digested: A hat-trick of resignations.
Picture of the week
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In the UK the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
