Yes, Friends, what's YOUR opinion on prisons? Well, if you haven't got one, why not just ask somebody who knows prisons "from the inside" (no pun intended!!!!), like local go-getter prisoner Derek Lowell, currently being detained "at His Majesty's pleasure" (!), at His Majesty's Prison (HMP) Winchester, no less!
Lowell's game-changing suggestions for prison reorganisation are splashed all over page 94 of this morning's Onion News for East Hampshire, so I expect, if you live in East Hampshire, you're up to speed already with his plans! But if not, read my lightly edited version right here, completely free of charge - I'm all heart haha!!!!
And, as we read the article, Lowell's vision for the UK's prisons of tomorrow brings a knowing glance or two between me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, here at our new home in leafy, semi-rural Liphook, Hampshire, not a million miles away from Lowell's current "accommodation" (!).
me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois - a recent picture
Our "knowing glances" are even "knowing-er" than usual today - is that a word? [No! - Ed], the reason being that Lois and I are feeling a bit like prisoners ourselves today.
It's the second day of the new window installation that we've arranged with Anglia Windows, and we're feeling pretty imprisoned ourselves in our lovely kitchen-diner-living-room area, trying to keep warm while our installers take out our existing windows and replace them with shiny new ones: in bedrooms, bathrooms etc.
We do manage to get a word with two our window guys every now and then, and make them cups of coffee on demand. Unlike the two who came yesterday, these two are English, which helps.
We decide, however, to make best use of the time by writing most of our 2025 Christmas cards, putting them in envelopes and sticking stamps and airmail stickers on them etc, all ready for posting later this week. Outrageously it costs 10p more to post cards to Europe than it does to post cards to the States or Australia - what madness !!!!!
"imprisoned in our living-room-kitchen-diner, we make the best use of our time
today, writing about 50 or so of the Christmas cards from our list of 80 - what madness!!!!
We've even got things in common with the older guy, who likes 80's music, it turns out. And he regales us with stories about his experiences living in Switzerland near the Nestles factory, and how the smell around town put him off chocolate for several years afterwards. In our turn, we can tell him about our holiday in Pennsylvania during our 3 years in the States in the early 1980's, where we stayed in the town of Hershey, home of Hershey Chocolates, an experience which had the same effect on us.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
our window-installer guys start getting their "stuff" out of their van
flashback to 1985: our holiday in Pennsylvania; (left) Lois and our daughters
Alison (10) and Sarah (8) visiting the famous Liberty Bell in Philadelphia,
and (right) Sarah's "letter to Mom" from the same time-period: happy days!!!!
In short, we like window guy's style, and I ask him about his hair, and whether he would recommend it for me. He says his style is called "locs" these days - the old "dreadlocks" term is not PC any more, apparently, and I check this on google later, and find that it's true. Next time I'm at the barbers, I don't want to embarrass myself, so that's all good!
But is it the right look for me? Your input required, if you have any thoughts - postcards only!!!!
21:00 After our 10 hours of "imprisonment" today, while the window guys were busy here - 8am to 6pml would you believe!!!! - Lois and I are ready tonight for a bit of relaxation, so before getting into bed, we have a look at this week's edition of comedy science quiz QI XL, presented by Sandi Toksvig.
They're currently being "sponsored" by the letter W - Sesame Street fans please note!!! And tonight the theme is all about the Wild West, which is nice!
Tonight's show busts a lot of cherished myths about "cowboys" and the Wild West of legend, like the so-called "ten-dollar hats" that cowboys have been said to have worn. They actually wore bowler hats, called "derby" hats. And the name "ten dollar hats" was probably actually a corruption of a Spanish phrase that meant something completely different.
Later presenter Sandi produces her idea of what an actual 10-gallon hat would look like - one that she'd made earlier, in true Blue Peter style!
What madness !!!!!
Lots of other surprise tonight too. Not all cowboys were white, like in the films: about 25% were black, and around a third were Mexican.
The Gunfight at the OK Corral happened somewhere completely different.
Kaiser Wilhelm liked the organisation of Annie Oakley's Wild West Show so much that he based the World War I German army around it.
The invention of barbed wire, which put an early end to the cattle drives of old, was also used to send messages from one end of a vast ranch to the other, becoming an early telephone system.
The first gold rush happened not in California but in North Carolina, after a young boy found something shiny in a creek, that his parents used as a door stop - when they eventually took it to a dealer they were fobbed off with just $3.50, when it was actually worth thousands.
The song "Take Me Home Country Roads" was actually written about Maryland, but they needed 4 syllables place for the lyric, so "West Virginia" was substituted.
Sawdust was used on saloon bar floors because the goldminers would sometimes drop bits of gold out of their pockets. The bar-owners would sweep the floor after closing time and put the scrapings in water, where the gold would sink to the top, separating it from the sawdust.
What a crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off days!!!!
Will this do?
[You're getting overtired, Colin. That's enough excitement for one day, just go to bed! -Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment