Forging Chains for Life

Dear Bruce

Re: The Wax King - Evaluation

I looked at your evaluation sheet yesterday and wondered how I should answer it.  Obviously I can work through your objectives list point by point but I don't really think that I could say the things that are in my heart.

It was all so confusing.  Of the fact that weall enjoyed it there was no doubt, but the outgoing value - how could I assess that.

Obviously I have started to enjoy Shakespeare for the first time in 68 years - thanks to your skill, but what more than this?

We all cried as we parted on Tuesday evening and I went back to my cell still crying.  But my tears were not unhappy ones - they were something quite different, and I still can't find the words to describe my feelings properly.

I laid awake until the early hours of the morning, my mind in a whirl, but then again strangely at peace until, at a quarter to three, I suddenly realised that I have not prayed for the past two weeks and I wanted to pray.

But words were not necessary.  I laid there in a state of euphoria, complete in my happiness and satisfaction.  I didn't need to say anything.  God was there by my side.

Prison is a terrible, sad, oppressing place, full of threats, unhappiness, loneliness and pressure.  How then, when then, did I feel like this?

I have had this feeling only twice before in my life.  Just over twenty five years ago I became involved in a Government project investigating youth attitudes towards unemployment and social provision in places as diverse as Drumchapel and Clydebank in Glasgow and Folkestone in Kent.

The training for this involved taking part in both 'Encounter' and 'T' Groups and a fourteen week workshop in Personal Development and Interpesonal Relationships under Dr. Leslie Button of Swansea University.

Both of these experiences resulted in the development of very special and long lasting friendships between many of the participants.  But these were normally between pairs of people, or, at the most, in small groups of three or four.

Mine were with an elderly and very senior lecturer form the Avery Hill College of Education and the other with another lady who had originated and run an experimental unit at St. Thomas' Hospital, London, bringing together mentally and physically handicapped children with able-bodied youths.

Both were married and had surrounded themselves with a 'wall' of professionalism as their defence against the emotional and personal demands that their jobs made on them.  Our training broke down these barriers and allowed a few, rather special but limited relationships to develop and they last until this day.

You, in your two week workshop, achieved more spectacular results than these carefully planned and psychologically based programmes.

In those two weeks incredible relationships developed between all of the people taking part.  The professionals and the inmates alike found themselves linked in a friendship that many people might not understand, as witnessed by the tears which flowed when we finally had to part.

I thought that this would probably be a five-minute wonder, but for the past few days we have all found that we have been looking for each other.  Hours are spent exploring the things that we did, and many other inmates have shared these experiences as they listened and got caught up in the enthusiasm and feelings of all of us who were lucky enough to take part.

My one sadness is for those hundreds of guys who, for one reason or another, were not able to take part.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity and for introducing me to Shakespeare.

Yours sincerely,

Roy