Busy, busy, busy!

I've not been around for a week or so, because I've been doing lots of other stuff! But, just to update anyone bored enough to read this,

• my weight has now dropped by 1st 3lbs in the five weeks since I started attending Slimming World
• I'm still waiting for my enhanced disclosure - which a phone call yesterday suggested might be on its way - but as they've said that before I'll believe it when I see it - hence I've still not began my support work
• the cleaner at Gorgie Salvation Army has been signed off for a month, and I've been covering for her absence
• last week, I gave my third service user involvement presentation and will be doing three more - on each of the new Get On courses this coming week
• today, I led the evening meeting at the 'Army - on the subject of 'how to avoid divorce' - which was very possibly the hardest I've ever had to do - and although there were only ten people there, I had lots of positive feedback
• I have another friend coming tomorrow evening, for the week
• and I'm exhausted, already!!

Jean Grainger - where are you?

Galashiels always reminds me of Jean, as it is her home town.

I originally met Jean during a drop-in at 219 West Street in Fareham, Hampshire - then a day services centre for people with mental health issues. It was of course her accent that drew my initial attention - a lovely, broad Border drawl.

Jean was not my worker, so we could afford to relate to one another on a different level as long as she worked there; though even if she had been, it would have been a special relationship. All her clients - me included, were routinely addressed as "bonny lad/lass," and all were made to feel special in an individual way.

She was not - and indeed, could not be - one of those workers who came to work wearing a hat bearing their job title. She came as Jean - the Jean that was married to Bill - a chief inspector in the MOD police, and the mother of Paul. They had lived all over the country - moving every few years with Bill's job; and indeed for a while we kept in touch after they left Portsmouth and moved north to Carlisle, where Bill had a posting: based at Longtown, but covering the whole of the north of England beyond the Mersey/Humber estuaries.

Like me, Jean is practically-minded, generous and yet also thrifty, a realist - and a natural rebel - always up for a laugh, especially if it was at the expense of management, or others in authority! She freely admitted that her professional approach had evolved over the years and there had been times when she and her colleagues had thought they were doing the right thing - but in a more enlightened age and with the gift of hindsight, she could see they most certainly were not. But she worked tirelessly, having founded and managed a Portsmouth day centre that broke all the usual rules and conventions about opening hours, and thought nothing of working late into the evening, at weekends and even on Christmas day if there was a need - which there usually was. Likewise, she had suffered her own demons, particularly with ME, and appreciated the need people often have for a 'wee cuddle' more than any other mental health professional I've ever known.

She was, quite simply, a very large part of my recovery process - just by being herself. Even when I felt at my most wretched, I knew I could turn up at the lunch club she ran, and somehow she'd manage to reach inside and soothe my hurt, where nothing or no-one else could - and I'd come away feeling better!

For a time, I visited Jean and Bill at Carlisle, usually on the return leg of my trips north; and on two occasions I was accompanied by other old pals. But as my father's health deteriorated sharply towards the close of 2002 and my visits had to become much more frequent, I usually travelled by air or sleeper train, and could not easily stopover at Carlisle.

By June 2003, when my father passed away and, perhaps more than ever before, I could have done with Jean's cuddles and cheerfulness; their phone number was no longer obtainable, and my cards and letters went unanswered. Last time I saw Jean, she was saying they might just have to make one more move before Bill's retirement, and while that does appear to have taken place, it does not explain why none of the people she kept in touch with ever heard from her again. For years, we have all compared notes, and nobody ever has.

Jean just isn't the sort of person to not get stay touch, no matter how long the absence. While it is possible her ME might have returned and rendered her physically or mentally incapable, no-one has heard from Bill either...

So if anybody knows the whereabouts of Jean and Bill Grainger, originally of Galashiels, who were living at Durdar village, Carlisle in 2002/3; please tell them their auld pals would love to know they're safe and well. And likewise, if you happen to know they're not - then please consider putting a lot of people out of their misery...

Bordering on the Inaccessible!

The Scottish Borders region is a gem, largely by-passed and undiscovered by all but the most intrepid traveller. Largely devoid of its industrial past, its towns remain surprisingly busy and even prosperous - as is the beautiful, unspoilt countryside surrounding them, dotted with well-kept villages and historical houses, castles and abbeys. Right through the middle runs the mighty River Tweed - rising in the Moffat hills in the west, then flowing through Peebles, Innerleithen, Selkirk, Melrose, Kelso and Coldstream en route to the North Sea at Berwick - forming the actual English border for some of its' course. With the exception of the Teviot, most of its tributaries have the suffix, water, rather than the usual prefix, river...


The area is of course by-passed because of the lack of a decent road network, and the complete absence (since the 1960s) of a rail network. While there is talk of reinstating the latter south from Edinburgh to Tweedbank, between Galashiels and Melrose; and the A7 is signposted as a 'tourist route' to Edinburgh off the M6 near Carlisle and perhaps the A68 is also, from the Newcastle area; even the merest glance at a map reveals so many twists, turns and gradients - that few choose these routes after a lengthy drive from the more populous parts of England.


So you might have thought - given the ongoing absence of any railway link - there would be a decent bus terminal at Galashiels, the main town (as much because of its central position as anything else). Well - think again...


Now, lets take a moment get this into some kind of proper perspective - because when you consider the number of awful bus stations dotted around the country, this really takes some doing: Galashiels wins first prize, in my opinion, of the grottiest, most cramped, least user-friendly, most unfit for purpose and desperately needing replacement bus station - that I have ever come across...


The site is triangular - hemmed in by a town centre by-pass road (with room for a single track railway line on the far side, should the Borders Rail Link project ever come to fruition - that's surely what you call wishful thinking, on the part of the town planners!); a supermarket car park; and Gala Water - one of those rivers that aren't actually called rivers. Evidently, it also gets used as a bus depot these days, and most probably to encourage local youth to vent their frustrations of boredom elsewhere, the whole is fenced in by one of those metal grey, spiked affairs. Likewise, the windows in the single-storey chalet-type building are all covered with sturdy wire mesh...


You're not warming to it really, are you?


There are six stances arranged in a straight line in front of the building - which buses are required to reverse out of in the usual fashion. In itself, that would be fine - if there weren't spare buses parked in every available space - such as in all the corners, and parallel to the northern boundary fence - in what might otherwise be considered the reversing space. Hence most manouvres require multi-point turns, within the tightest of spaces!


Within the building are public toilets - which cost an exhorbitant 30p to enter (hence I usually go elsewhere in the town, for free), a drivers mess room, and a tiny waiting room - just enough space for four seats. The latter is usually closed. Outside is more seating - under cover, but only just! There isn't really any room to queue and pass at the same time - resulting in frequent collisions between would-be travellers. Above each stance is a metal sign which I imagine is supposed to tell you which buses call there - only, unless you happen to have some local knowledge, most of them do nothing of the sort!


Then the best bit - remembering there's no enquiry office of any description - is that there are no timetables. It doesn't even look as though there ever were, as there are no display cases - save for one at the end, which gives details of Munro's Border Courier services - one bus in each direction per day, Monday to Friday, between Peebles and Borders General Hospital, plus another from Eyemouth - that serves different villages on different days of the week. That's it!


So how, pray, are you meant to know which stance to wait at - and for how long - for the mostly 30-minute service to Edinburgh via Stow, or the 30-minute service to Edinburgh via Peebles, or the frequent services to Selkirk, Hawick, Carlisle, and Melrose - running by several different routes? Not to mention the very frequent town services, or the hourly services to Earlston and St Boswells - with their various extensions to Lauder, Oxton, Duns, Berwick, Kelso and Jedburgh; or even the daily National Express service to Wrexham (yes, I did say Wrexham)!


Fortunately, I did know that my number 60 bus departed from the 'via Melrose' stance, and sure enough, our bus emerged from a corner parallel to the building, pulled forward, then back, then forward, then back again - and a total of eleven points later, eventually pulled into the correct bay! What I didn't know was which route it took 'via Melrose' however - and it was just as well I resisted my thought to pick it up from what I thought was it's first stop on the way out of town, as it didn't go that way at all! Instead, we took a pleasant run along the north bank of the Tweed, crossing the river by a single-track arched bridge just east of Tweedbank, before looping through the grounds of the relatively new Borders General Hospital...


Melrose - whose parish is home to some of my earliest traceable ancestors - is a pleasant town indeed. Of all the border abbeys, Melrose's is the most complete, and there's the added attraction of half the former railway station to look at, too! We then passed through the village of Newstead, scarcely fitting through its steep, narrow main street; before emerging on the A6091 just short of Leaderfoot roundabout - named of course, after the famous (former) railway viaduct which crosses the Tweed valley just to the north - at its' confluence with the Leader Water - which gives its name to Lauderdale, and the town of Lauder, of common riding fame...


A few miles up the A68 - now largely built upon the former Berwickshire Railway trackbed; we passed though the attractive village of Earlston - where it is possible to connect with of of Munro's awful vehicles to Edinburgh, Jedburgh or Kelso. If Gala's bus station is the worst-ever, then Munro of Jedburgh's single-deck buses are the worst-ever vehicles - rendering the Borders an even less atractive proposition to would-be daytrippers. They are the usual modern low-floor affairs - inoffensive enough to look at - but boy, that all changes when you try to find a seat you can actually fit into...


Now, these are not busy services. Apart from Edinburgh and Dalkeith, none of the communities they serve have a population much greater than six or seven thousand. So why, oh why, do they feel the need to squeeze in as many of those horrid, hard, narrow seats as they possibly can? I may be quite tall, but my thighs are short in proportion to the rest of my body - and there are just two places in those vehicles I can sit with any semblance of comfort - right at the front, or right at the back! In any other part of the bus, I need an aisle seat - so that I can put one knee out in the aisle itself, and point the other towards the window. There is absolutely no way I can sit forward at all - and when you consider a goor proportion of the passengers using these routes are people younger than I - most of whom are considerably taller; that's nothing sort of totally ridiculous...!


East of Earlston was new territory for me - at least on the west to east axis. I'd been down the A697 north to south road a couple of times in the late 1970s, but apart from that, the former county of Berwickshire had simply proved too difficult to get to.


Note the name - Berwickshire. Always a Scottish county, the town whose name it bears has of course been part of England since 1482 - though a recent local referendum has shown that over 70% of Berwick Upon Tweed's population wants the town to return to Scottish jurisdiction again! Absolutely everybody's talking about it!!


Our bus passed through two of its subsequent administrative centres, and if the most recent - the attractive but tiny, market town of Duns - seems unlikely; that's nothing when compared to Greenlaw! http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/greenlaw/greenlaw/index.html tells the story far more eloquently that I could - and shows the 'town hall' in a rather better state than it now appears - fenced off, boarded up, with weeds growing out of the masonry...


Duns is also terminus of two further bus routes to and from Berwick - and very occasional weekday journeys to places such as Coldstream, and Kelso. Indeed, one of the thrice-daily 34s was awaiting our arrival - giving a connection for Coldingham, Ayton and Eyemouth; and we met one of the 260s travelling in the opposite direction as we passed through the large village of Chirnside, which generated more passengers than everywhere else put together!

I'd never stopped in Berwick Upon Tweed before, but I shall certainly return - what a beautiful town! Built on quite a steep hill, the lower part is fortified against the once frequent English/Scottish raids and indeed, much of the enormous ramparts are walkable. Traffic on the main street also passes through a town gate, which is a rare feature indeed this far north. At the foot of the busy, but relatively uninspiring shopping area is the spired town hall - with roads passing on all sides; and below that are numerous narrow, winding roads leading to either the old town bridge or harbour - both of which are still in use. Many of the buildings are Georgian and pastel-painted - always a feature I've appreicated, as it really does brighten up what would otherwise be a fairly drab scene. There are also riverside walks at various levels, not to mention sandy coves and very Scottish-looking golf links!

Indeed, there are Scottish accents everywhere. The banks are Scottish, people are purchasing their goods with Scottish banknotes, they attend Scottish churches and Scottish league football matches - English voices seem very much in a minority. So perhaps it is little wonder the locals are voting to return to Her Majesty's northern kingdom, once more.

On the down side, I couldn't find Chapel Street. The main bus stops in Golden Square - not so much a square as a part of the road leading to the Royal Tweed Bridge (that's the concrete one built in the late 1920s) said in their timetable cases that Eyemouth & Edinburgh buses left from Chapel Street - but gave no indication of how to get there; and neither did any of the tourist town trail signs reveal where Chapel Street might be. So I walked up to the top of the hill, near the railway station (yes - it does have one, being on the main line south; and thinking of it, if they did restore Berwick Borough to its former Scottish county, the Scottish Borders council area would no longer be bereft of a railway station - that'd be much cheaper than reopening the line to Tweedbank! I do hope nobody thinks of that...), and caught my next bus there...

Eyemouth is in some respects a smaller version of Berwick - vaguely reminiscent of West Cowes and Lynmouth too - I guess because of its' slightly north-easterly facing aspect, and the fact that its' docks straddle the mouth of a river. As a mark of respect to its tragic history of losing large numbers of fishermen to rough seas, I had a piece of fish from the chippie - with most of the batter removed, as per my eating regime - and lovely it was too. Then I walked along the stunning cliff-top coastal path as far as beautiful Coldingham Bay, and into historic Coldingham village, where I caught the last 253 of the day home to Edinburgh.

So of Berwick and Berwickshire I can only say, make the effort to go there and spend some time there - you won't be disappointed! As for me, I shall be back...

Diet? What diet??

Yesterday, I broke my new eating plan - there are times when only some serious carbohydrate intake hits the spot!

I'm not beating myself up about it though. I've so far lost 10lbs in three weeks after all. Rome wasn't built in a day...

Takin' over a new asylum!

Having developed and for several years managed a unique service user involvement group within Fareham & Gosport's adult mental health community, I have been very pleased in recent weeks to have been offered opportunities to transfer these skills and experience to the development of service user initiatives within Edinburgh's employability sector.

This morning, I attended a meeting - and gave a short presentation about my journey, which I've entitled, Institution to Employment, within a large gathering of (mostly) voluntary sector agencies. The feedback and support I received was very positive indeed - and without too much effort, I succeeded in getting two major items on the agenda, as well as making a significant impression for the need for a complete overhaul of the values, beliefs and practices widely held within the Scottish employability sector, in relation to service users and service user involvement!

Tomorrow, I am due to co-present at another, much larger conference, which will include a number of statutory sector agents and service commissioners. As a number of the people present today will also be there, it seems likely that even greater weight could be added to my proposals - which incidentally, have already attracted suggested funding resources.

So I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself right now!!

Understanding youth crime...

I spent most of yesterday afternoon responding to one of those internet forum threads, which was on the subject of coming down heavy on young people who get into trouble, and ressurecting the old borstal system.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm very much of the opinion that there are currently far too few boundaries available to young people in this country, and something clearly needs to be done about that sooner rather than later. Unlike a lot of people - who seem to think that the existence of boundaries for young people will help protect their interests; I'm very much of the opinion that the existence of boundaries helps young people's interests...

The fact is, human nature has a lot to answer for. As small children, most of us will have learned the hard way why our mothers told us not to do or touch a particular thing - in one way or another, it hurt! But before we experienced hurt, we had no way of understanding why it was such a bad thing, to be avoided at all costs - or why our mothers (or whoever) didn't want us to experience hurt. There are some things in life we just have to try, to satisfy ourselves whether they really are or are not a good idea!

Of course, the first crucial point is, hurt need not be physical. Boundaries need not be physical. Taking an eye for an eye is never justified! Take something the offender values by all means and in the case of a younger person, still on his or her journey of learning what is and is not acceptable behaviour to society, take something they value for a period of time - but return it, later. Provide them with a means of learning that in order to have what they value all the time, there are certain boundaries that they must not cross, because if they do, they'll be deprived of something they value, for a while - and actually, that hurts...

The second crucial point is this: don't automatically assume that their values are the same as your own! Don't reach for a leather belt or willow cane and aim for their backsides - they might not like it very much, but it won't necessarily hurt them as much as it hurts you. And don't just lock them up either - don't assume their experiences of life are the same as your own!!

I'm going to reproduce here what I wrote yesterday, to explain why:

I was one of the last people in Scotland ever to be sentenced to borstal training in November 1981 - the system was phased out a few months later. So for the benefit of those not so much in the know, let's define exactly what the old borstal systems were. I say systems, because they differed between England & Scotland.

From what I understand, the English system was something vaguely reminiscent to what you might now call a boot camp - early rising, early to bed, cold showers, lots of PT and drilling and fairly menial work in between - it lasted six months, and you could be sentenced to it up to three times. I don't think there was any intermediate sentence between borstal and approved schools.

In my view, the Scottish system was better thought out. At that time we had what were known as 'list D schools', which were normally residential units for young teenagers who'd broken the law; but for those aged 16 or 17, there were detention centres where the approach was one of short, sharp, shock: six weeks of what most people would consider hell, basically.

The detention centres were an alternative sentence however, as not all borstal boys (and I don't think any borstal girls) went there - though it has to be said, the majority did - more of which in a minute. Borstal was a single-sentence option in Scotland, with a minimum tarriff of nine months - extendable by the prison governor up to a maximum of two years, depending on the behaviour of the inmate during his/her sentence. Any time previously spent on remand was NOT deducted...

All boys spent their first six weeks in the assessment wing at Polmont (which was officially called HMI Brightons), near Falkirk - a closed, traditional Victorian-style prison hall with a couple of dormitories on the ground floor, but mostly single cells around upper galleries, known there as 'flats'. (By the time I was in the system, the former girls' borstal at Greenock had closed, and the few female borstal trainees that existed were housed in a wing of the relatively new Cornton Vale women's prison, at Stirling). The purpose of the assessment centre was to push inmates as far as possible, to discover where their tolerance limits lay (they didn't have to push me very hard - I was being escorted to the cell block within ten minutes of my arrival; as a result of which I inadvertantly earned myself a great deal of respect amongst the other boys!!). It was as I think a lot of us would imagine borstal to be - early mornings, cold showers, PT three times a day, drill, parades, scrubbing floors on hands and knees, cleaning dirty toilets - and a great deal of rough justice and verbal abuse by staff.

At the end of the assessment period, you were interviewed by your wing governor and a panel of others (medics, social workers, officers and official prison visitors) and considered for one of three options. Probably around 40% of boys (those who'd survived the harsh conditions of the past six weeks relatively unscathed, not been on report for anything, and just accepted their lots), were sent to one of the two open borstals that existed at the time - Castle Huntly, near Dundee, or Noranside, up in the Angus glens. There they did maintenance or catering work, or agricultural or forestry labouring, to pass their days...

The lion's share of the others (including yours truly) were sent to one of the other wings at Polmont, which was a secure institution - and employed in either the joiners or welders workshops, the kitchens, or on one of the maintenance teams. A very small number - just two or three individuals every couple of months - was sent to Carrick House in the grounds of Polmont. This was what might now be known as the Muppet Wing, or something similar - a very small (capacity around 10) 'house' with a very high staff ratio including females (at that time, apart from wing Matrons, who were responsible for catering and laundry arrangements, screws were invariably male in male prisons) - and it was run on something akin to a therapeutic model, with rewards for good behaviour and so on.

Wherever you ended up in the system though, you were expected to perform a number of regular tasks, including pristine maintenance of your appearance, that of your room and its contents - all of which were strictly monitored and frequently inspected, both by wing officers and the governor. This involved regular scrubbing, washing and polishing of both floor surfaces and boots - and if you got the slightest mark on either, you had to start all over again. The items you were allowed in your room were strictly controlled, and had to be arranged in a certain way - as did your bedding and furnishings. You had to address the officers (who did not wear uniform - which I suspect was a deliberate ploy to make inmates feel even less human and individual) as 'Sir' at all times, and use only your prison number and surname to describe yourself.

Work ran from about 7.30am until 4.30pm with breaks for lunch and tea; recreation was limited to an hour and a half on weekday evenings, and on Saturday afternoons unless you had a visit (visits were once a month); and apart from Sunday morning church attendance - which wasn't compulsory, but most boys opted to go, if only to avoid the alternative - you spent the rest of your time in the solitary confinement of your room.

Everyone wore prison uniform at all times - at the start of your sentence you were issued with a pair of rough, itchy black serge trousers and matching jacket - which you kept as best, as well as a pair of work shoes and a pair of 'soft' shoes; and each week you were issued with two shirts, two vests, two pairs of underpants, a pair of homemade denim jeans and a matching jacket for work; and you got clean socks every other weekday. For the first five months, everyone wore red striped shirts, but at that stage (and every subsequent month thereafter) you were assessed for promotion to 'your shirt', which meant you wore blue stripes instead - but this could be and frequently was revoked for inappropriate behaviour. Blue shirts had more privileges, better jobs, were allowed outside (but still within the perimeter fence) to play football in summer months, and got higher wages for their work (something like £2.95 a week, instead of the £2.72 the red shirts got), which could be spent on sweets, tobacco and toiletries, or saved up for release - which was always four months after they'd been awarded their shirt - assuming they kept their noses out of trouble.

As you can probably tell, borstal made a deep impression on me. I went in an immature boy and emerged a young man on the road towards some kind of recovery - but I have to say, I was the exception. With the greatest of respect, I don't honestly believe that any of you who have not had a connection with the youth offender system at some point in your lives could possibly even begin to appreciate the extent of what I'm about to say - however much you may feel you want to...

Almost all young offenders are career-offenders. Out of the dozens of inmates I came into contact with, I was the only one who had never had dealings with any part of the penal system before. I was the only one I can recall who had attended a normal school, rather than a residential, bad-boys' institution. And what's more - I had attended it too; whereas left to their own devices, most of them had been perpetual truants!

I was also the only one with a stable family background. Not only were my parents married to each other, but neither had ever strayed outside that relationship. Both went out to work to ensure we had a comfortable style of living. They frowned upon people who squandered their money on alcoholic drink, tobacco and adult entertainments, leaving their kids wanting - they'd both had such experiences as children themselves, and were determined to ensure that I did not; and, despite everything that had happenned, they always stood by me and did their best for me. Also, I was the only member of my family ever to have been in jail!

I was also in quite a small minority of inmates that could actually read and write; and think a stage or two ahead - the vast majority were semi-illiterate, and from broken or abusive homes, mostly eeking out a meagre existence on some run-down estate in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee - or one of the grim, former industrial towns such as Motherwell, Wishaw, or Coatbridge. All the men folk they'd ever known spent their lives in and out of prison - while their mothers, aunts and sisters spent all their weekends visiting different husbands, fathers, brothers and sons in different jails! Prison was as much a part of those families' lives as chapel is a part of the life of monks and nuns - I kid you not - I use no form of exaggeration at all...

Employment wasn't so much a swear word, as just something that only other people seemed to have access to. None of them had ever known it - not in living memory anyway; nor had any of the others they were in regular contact with. In most of these places, even the official unemployment figures were between 15-25% at the time - so with the wrong address, any sort of record, and without any decent sort of education, they'd not a hope in hell - and they knew it. Poverty was a way of life, as was drinking, as was crime...

At breaktimes, we'd sit round in large circles, and there was just two lines of conversation (well, three when I was around actually, as I'd decided to come out - but that's another matter). Girlfriends and future plans. All told in a very macho, trying to outdo and impress each other sort of way...!

The 'what I'm going to do when I get released' conversations were very interesting. Invariably they included consuming copious amounts of alcohol, doing unspeakable things with their birds and - nine times out of ten - ending up in Glenochil (Young Offenders Institution - the next step on the prison system ladder) - usually within about a fortnight.

Honestly - that went for almost everybody there - they had ambitions lasting two weeks at best. In practice, I'd imagine the majority of them would have struggled to make it past their first drinking binge, to be perfectly honest...

Life on the outside was like a fairground ride to them - something you went on occasionally, for a quick thrill.

One or two of them even openly described how they looked forward to what seemed like the inevitability of an eventual life-sentence - because then they'd be king of their own bits of the castle, and have rights to such luxuries as tv sets in their cells.


Have you any idea just how sad that is, folks? Can you even put it into words? These were 17 and 18-year olds, whose entire experience of life suggested that the best they could expect from life was the occasional shag and drinking binge between prison sentences! Every last one of their role models had gone that way - every single one; and nobody they'd ever known lived in anything other that abject poverty - relieved only by the proceeds of crime!

Not one person in their lives had ever taken the trouble to try to get to know them as the individuals they were. Everybody related to the roles they played, or to the labels they'd received - thief, burglar, drunkard, layabout, irritating little bastard. They'd not have known love if it had hit them in the face - at best, they were an inconvenience that had once been cute kids, that their mothers visited grudgingly, out of a sense of duty. Most of them had never experienced any of the good things in life - never been outside of the city, or away on holiday. They had to conform to the standards of their families and neighbourhoods too - for any attempt to even consider alternatives resulted in bullying, beating and absolute ostracisation from the only communities they ever knew, or felt any sense of belonging to.

Is the penny dropping for you yet? Yes, you're right - the reason these guys keep offending and getting themselves locked up is because jail offers them a means of escape from this awful world! No matter how bad conditions are inside, at least they know at the end of the day there will always be somebody to talk to, who won't judge them, and who will relate to them as the individuals each of them is! There is a ready source of friends, of sporting chums and rivals - which helps a lot if the regime is tough, as they chivvy each other along by ridiculing those of their number that can't make it!

Prison is the only place in the world where they can expect to have some kind of work to occupy their days - and give them a sense of place, and belonging! They don't have to worry where their next meal is coming from, or the rent money; and they know they'll have a warm bed to sleep in! By making jail their home - they do get 'holidays' - those occasional, short periods they spend outside. It gives them something to look forward to, somthing to talk about, something to work towards...

To those of you who advocate locking up youth offenders, can I just ask - how much of this picture I've been painting, of such people's lives, were you aware of? Had you any inkling at all that the world we live in has such huge inequalities - even within our own country? Can you honestly say you knew that, for many youngsters, it is such a fucking diabolical place where all you get is hurt, fucked up, shit all over and then hurt, fucked up and shit on again and again - that actually, they'd rather spend their lives in jail where at least there are some positive certainties? And if not - do you still think as a nation, we should be punishing those individuals for what can only be their best efforts to express the inexpressible hatred and contempt for a society that constantly turns a blind eye to their awful plights - or are you thinking that the real problem - that is the root cause of it all - might just lie outside of the prison gates - and maybe we should be making a damn sight more effort to make that a better place to be?

I rest my case. Thanks for reading.


I fear there are far too many people in the world who don't have the faintest clue what they're talking about, and expousing opinions about. I just pray that by sharing a little of my story, I might persuade a few of them to think again.

And come to think of it...

Today would have been my parents' 46th wedding anniversary.

Ten years ago there was no reason to suppose they'd not be in the running for breaking marriage records - they'd both married young - she was 19 and he was 21; and I was already having thoughts about Golden Wedding presents - as I'd not had the means to offer much at their Silver event.

That they might just scrape past 41 years together before one of them passed away was completely unthinkable...

Please spare a prayer for my mother - who has probably had quite a bad night, and will have another tonight - she doesn't sleep well at the best of times. Thank-you.