18January1996

My dear folks,

My day has not been a complicated one. Last night I worked. Today I slept. I slept long & well & I was very grateful to have done so. For supper, Jones served an avo sandwich taster followed by spaghetti with tomato puree. There you have it, the whole day. Tonight I work again.

Jones is distressed. She has lost the watch she received from Alan when he & Kevin came through London some time ago. She thinks it came off when she pulled off a glove. Although she immediately retraced her steps, there was no sign of it - hardly surprising. I consoled her with a story of a disastrous loss of my own - of the Omega Dad had got from Levers for long service and which he gave to me. I lost it up Table Mountain & although I crawled back up the route I’d come down, never saw sign of it again. That really hurt.

Here, the Home Secretary has decreed that women prisoners shall no longer be shackled to warders during labour as a concession to humanitarian values - even if this marginally increases the danger of the women leaping off over the rooftops. It has been a great issue here after secretly-taken pix were shown of manacled women about to give birth. It broke shortly after the revelations of the recent Chinese policy of deliberately starving certain orphans to death. One irreverent newspaper cartoon here showed a group of horrified Chinese looking at a shackled British prisoner about to give birth.

It’s been events abroad that have occupied me professionally, especially the double hostage crisis in the Caucasus-Black Sea area. The BBC correspondents covering the assault on the Dagestan village of Pervomayskoya were forced - like other journalists - to retire some 20 miles from the scene for the final 36 hours of the assault. This was not for their safety but so that they could not contradict the stories being put out by the Russians. Thus astonishingly after pulverising the village “because the Chechens have killed all the hostages”, the Russians have been able to revive several dozen. Surviving hostages tell of their captors’ kindness while Russian troops winge about the bungled military operation. And President Yeltsin, whose re-election plans have dictated events, looks increasingly like spending more time with his family. What a vile, meretricious world!

An email check reveals a letter from Judy which I shall fax on to you separately.
Time I went off to earn a crust.

Blessings ever!
T