Only idiots are bored. There is always something to be thinking about. Obsess about the trivialities, that’s what they say. But from the get-go you are overwhelmed with a sense of boredom. I worked day and night on a project to reliably replace the blindfold in as short as time as possible so that I could spend the days with both eyes open. And as I became more adept at the trick, I left my permanent blackout to live in the half-light of the room. In time, as I adjusted to it, I came to recognise something approximating to morning as the slender rays of sun lit up the ceiling through the tiny, high window, then evening again, as almost nothing gave way to absolutely nothing again.
The early days of captivity were the hardest. Not for the loneliness. In a way I relished the solitude. Like that time on Desert Island Discs when I chose a twelve-mile exclusion zone (nautical) as my luxury item. But soon my only defence to the crushing boredom was sleep. Real sleep was wonderful, but the hours spent lying awake desperate for a sleep that was miles away were unbearable, and they were of nothing to the waking hours, where sleep has not quite gone but full consciousness not yet resumed. That essence of being human that allows your brain to wake before your body in case there’s a fire or a predator about – it can’t be switched off when there’s nothing doing and so goes looking for trouble. Worse still, I welcomed it in. It’d open up by suggesting something innocuous, ‘Don’t you think it would have been better if I’d stayed behind for an hour in the library, instead of rushing home to watch television?’ Who could deny such logic? It drew you in by establishing common ground. Then once it had you cornered that was it.
Like Einstein’s insane man, I constantly repeated the same experiment, but worse than him, I seemed to wish for the same outcome each time. Why do we do that? The sting of recall to understand an error that you once made – hoping that by analysing it over and over, it will be made right? Or that if we think about it for long enough, we’ll be able to travel back to it and get to face the situation anew? There is something about these re-runs that is me, and in those half-awake hours when they start, I somehow want to listen to them again; reluctant to leave my pit of mortification until they’ve said their piece. Perhaps successful types just know how to get out of bed at the right time?
“Good morning, it’s five a.m. and the lines are open. If any of you out there have got any embarrassing anecdotes about our friend Dickie, we’d love to hear them. And when we say embarrassing, only call if they’re the type to make you wince. Come on now listeners, we’re trying to destroy this man, dismantle him from the inside, like a buried parasite, eating its way out of him. Don’t let me down, I want to hear those calls. There we go – the switchboard’s going into meltdown this morning. And remember, today’s calls are all about mishandled relationships.”
If only I’d had a flock of sheep to tend.
Some days I remember a new event – a fresh, shaming moment that can be analysed endlessly, until it becomes like the rest – permanently imprinted in my memory, ready to be piped on board as soon as I turned in my sleep. They too closely resembled an old adversary for me to say that they were brought on by captivity, but I guess that they flourished there, like that thing in chemistry when you re-lighted a glowing splint in a jar of oxygen. Within a few weeks I knew for certain that every decision I’d ever made was wrong, and soon after that I came to the point where I could recall the key moments of my life in one short session. It felt like grief. Like I’d let a healthy thing die.
Alone, I did nothing. Nothing. I thought if I could empty myself of every thought, when I came back round, a day would have passed, but it never had. I didn’t have a means of counting time but the near silent respiration of the house always told me that it was about five seconds later. It was like listening to the clock go round at Aunty Elsie’s house. Every second marked with a solemn drum beat and an endless wait for the next one to arrive.
I try to sleep by forcing myself to think about good things, like going to visit Aunt Elsie when you hadn’t been made to go, but I can’t – the image constantly eludes me and changes. In one of them I am constantly harangued by Jimmy Savile to read “Lord of the Flies” aloud to him; in another, H-Elon Xman makes me check his hairline and scratch the join to check that it’s all still in place.
After a while, I realize that one of the reasons I can’t sleep is that I am ill – something like the flu. Yes, that’s right. This despair and nihilism under which I’m sinking has all been created by a scientist in a laboratory. It is not me. It is the means they use to control us who will not willingly submit to their oppression. Of course it is – my rejection of the bible, means that they must revert to micro-biology to have me under their yoke. So, I reject the idea of trying to sleep altogether, accept that I’m awake, and begin to plan a better life for as soon as I’m out of here. One where small victories are constantly heaped on each other, until they turn, unnoticed into a significant pile on which you then stand.
First thing I’ll do, I decide, as soon the moment I regain my liberty, will be to go to the toilet in a tupperware box and send it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with a card which says, “I think this belongs to you.”
Dickie White's Diary 