Into the 21st century.

Woke to the radio blurting out the words... "finally dying". Wondered at the phraseology. A kind of bizarre way to think about the demise of a life, any life. Sort of impatient and irritated, neither aggressive nor acquiescent, but conveying the sense that the speaker felt cheated by the man who had lived longer than he had been expected to.

Leaving the arguments about his innocence to the side for a moment, I wondered why the diagnosis of terminal cancer wasn't enough of a punishment. After all it is a form of torture. Slow to start with, but gradually mounting to a crescendo from which the only relief is oblivion and finally death.

Speaking of torture, Foucault writes that it forms part of a ritual...

"... public torture and exhibition must be spectacular, it must be seen by all almost as it's triumph. The very excess of the violence employed is one of the elements of it's glory: the fact that the guilty man should moan and cry out under the blows is not a shameful side effect, it is the very ceremonial of justice being expressed in all its force..."

Do we really need to seek justice by pursuing the body beyond pain itself? Is it that the excruciating pain associated with terminal cancer is not visited in a public enough sphere? Surely public executions ceased being a feature of our society a long time ago? Not everyone will agree with me, but I hope for his family's sake that this is so.

Moving swiftly on...

the village now has a (very popular) chip van that visits once a week.