(On Christmas Eve)
My debts have hounded me down. My sins have closed in on me. The hate, confusion and pettiness surrounding me suffocate. The unpaid rent threatens to get me spending the approaching night on the street (now, this I hope won't happen - the weather sucks). I've fallen out with my own country and my relation with my favourite one is dangerously tense. A young woman whom I love has withdrew her comforting words and offered the me harsh truth, somehow - even without anyone mentioning it - bringing back the memories of the time when I hurt her beyond description. My son goes to church only occasionally. Across the Channel (and then across half the continent) my ailing and innocent - I swear! - parents are forced to contemplate the ruin of their first-born (who used to laugh most at the Christmas table) and I can't even call them to say that all is fine, because - through my talent, idiocy, laziness and rejection of the system - I'm penniless.
I think of these things and then break down in tears: he should have been acquitted.
