“All I know is that they did the experiments on mice! It doesn’t say what the experiments were. But it cannot be beyond the wit of man to devise an experiment which exercises a mouse without making him wear tiny trainers A treadmill, for example An exercise wheel…”"How cruel,” said the orange lady “Humans jog voluntarily. People who take exercise have their mental faculties sharpened at the same time as their physical fitness is improving.”"So, where do mice come into this?” said the resident Welshman, speaking, I think, for all of us.”Because the scientists did all the experiments on mice,” said the man at the bar.There was a pause.”How did they get the mice to go jogging?” said the resident Welshman, and again I think he spoke for all of us.”How far did they have to run?” said the lady with orange hair, sipping her orange juice.”Being Californian mice, did they all wear tiny baseball caps turned backwards?” said the man with the dog.”As they jogged, did they listen to tiny Sony Walkmans?”"Or Sony Walkmice?”"And were they sponsored by Nike or Adidas?”"Listen!” said the man at the bar. “Apparently some scientists in California have shown that jogging is not just good for the body, it’s also good for the mind. When people in pubs ask questions like that, they do not require an answer. They are merely announcing that they are about to tell you all about it, and are requesting a gap in the conversation, rather like a motorist signalling to pull out.
“What mice were they then?” said the man with the dog, courteously slowing down and letting him have access to the flow of talk.”Californian mice,” said the man at the bar.

“SEE THAT report in the paper about the mice?” said the man at the bar. To watch this intelligent, articulate, thoughtful young man talk about Stephen was deeply affecting, and it was a reminder that this case, whatever else has flowed from it, was about the death of an 18-year-old boy who had his whole life ahead of him.. (Neville won.) Feeling the explosion of anger and frustration among the crowd outside the building as the five emerged after completing their evidence.Three days ago, I sat down in a BBC studio and watched a lengthy, uncut interview with Elvin Odoru, who was Stephen Lawrence’s best friend at the time he was murdered. Seeing Neville Lawrence engage in a staring match with Theresa Norris, while her son, David, one of the five suspects, was giving evidence in the witness box. Watching that infamous police surveillance video, all 90 minutes of it, in the company of a mainly black audience at the public inquiry, and feeling sick to my stomach. They talked of officers shouting “Pakis” at them as they drove past in the street; of police waking them up three or four times a night in the small hours, on the pretext of checking that they were abiding by their curfews; of being taken in for questioning and given bacon sandwiches.There are moments from the last 12 months that will for ever remain in my memory. I spent two days in Bradford speaking to Asian youths in Manningham, a run-down inner-city area that periodically erupts in riots.

As the team held public meetings in Manchester, Bradford, Bristol and Birmingham, members of ethnic minority communities in those cities queued up to tell anyone who would listen that the Lawrence family’s experiences resonated with their own.In each city, the team found a stark dichotomy between the fine-sounding policy initiatives undertaken by senior officers and the reality out on the streets, where the message had not got through to policemen on the beat. Later, they were joined by Kwesi Menson, the brother of Michael Menson, the musician who died after being set on fire in north London, and Sukhdev Reel, mother of Ricky Reel, the Asian student found drowned in the river Thames.It was when the inquiry team left London last autumn for a regional tour that it became plain that the Lawrence case had touched a raw nerve. Perhaps it coincided with a growing realisation that the hearings were becoming a magnet for other victims of racial injustice. Familiar faces were starting to appear in the public gallery; that of Frank Critchlow, for instance, the Notting Hill community worker who sued the police for assault, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after he was arrested in a drugs raid, and Myrna Simpson, whose daughter, Joy Gardner, died of asphyxiation while she was being restrained by police officers during an immigration raid. Earlier, on learning that officers who conducted house-to-house enquiries after the murder were ignorant of the fact that suspects had been identified in tips to police, Sir William told one of them, Sergeant Nigel Clement: “It strikes me that in that case your visit to the houses was totally useless.”It is difficult to remember the precise moment when it dawned on me that the inquiry had grown into something bigger than a scrutiny of the aftermath of one racist murder. He interrupted Detective Chief Superintendent John Barker, who conducted a discredited internal review of the murder inquiry, to tell him that his evidence lacked credibility and his review was indefensible. The message was clear – “get out of my sight” – and Barker swiftly followed his advice.