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730 am

For those prisoners who do not return to work, Boxing Day is alery this , and certainly none of the

813 am

Over breakfast, I learn another terrible consequence of the drug culture in prisons Jiym orderly, tells me that some inmates who are addicted to heroin often die within a fewprison The reason? The heroin they take in jail is aleaker because the dealers add other substances such as caster sugar, talc or flour So when they are released, they are immediately exposed to a purer substance, which the body can no longer tolerate Result? They end up dying of an overdose

1100 am

The governor drops in to see Linda, and gives me a Christmas present and a birthday present for Mary, neither of which he’s allowed to do, as it could compromise him should I ever come up in front of him on report However, as it’s only a few days before he retires, I suppose he feels this is unlikely

It turns out that the governor is a collector of farthings, and he gives Mary a farthing dated 1944 and I receive one dated 1940 — our respective years of birth I as in three volus: Selected Masterpieces, published in 1934 and edited by T Leman Hare, for me to read over Christmas He understands what turns me on

The three volu at several levels, not least because of the one hundred pictures, almost all of them would be in an equivalent cos include da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Bellini’s Portrait of the Doge Lorendano, Re the Bay Mare (wonderful) and Yeames’ When Did You Last See Your Father? However, in this 1934 volume, there is no mention of the Ih or even Cézanne Velasquez is described as the greatest Spanish painter of all time, with Murillo in second place I wonder if Professor Hare had even heard of Picasso in 1934, and where he would place him in the lexicon of Spanish artists in 2002

There are only two artists I have never come across before: John MacWhiter and Millet — not Jean-Francois Millet, but an American, Francis David Millet ‘On the out’ I visit Tate Britain regularly—I live opposite, on the other side of the river — but I don’t re either MacWhiter’s June in the Austrian Tyrol (nificent), or Millet’s Between Two Fires I hope Sir Nicholas Serota has the the first places I visit once I’m released

In his foreword, Professor Hare writes so that, in my opinion, is even more relevant today than it was in 1934:

There is so much nonsense spoken and written about art today that the average man is, naturally, inclined to be shy of the whole subject, and suspicious of those who practise the Arts He thinks, if this on is the result of the love of Art, he had better do without Art altogether There is no mystery about Art, but there is mystification without end, evolved by certain critics who love to pose as superior persons Such writers put forward the theory that the enjoyment of fine arts is reserved for a select and exclusiveof course, thereater error could be propounded than this, which is a coerous that if persisted, itand everyone connected with Art

1934

2002 No comment

100 pm

Linda shuts up shop for the day and goes home for a well-earned rest She has been on duty for the past nineteen days without a break