Because I have been very busy over the past week writing articles. I have a plan, you see: I am going to make $20,000 on Helium from my writing and buy a mobile home in Oregon by the sea and live there with a couple of dogs and the seagulls. So, if you fancy a quick read, or just feel like being benevolent while not actually reading anything at all ( Read more... )

Ray has decided he would like to know more about his biological father. Great! I'm all for it. Except that we have very little to go on. Like, his name. That's it. Oh and the probability (though not certain) that he was in Maryland or Pennsylvania during the late spring of 1959 ( Read more... )

Ray may never know how close he came to not getting my letters for a while. I had decided last night that if I got nothing again today (which would make 3 weeks) then I was going to take some action. I had planned to still write, because I do not feel right when I dont, but to not actually send the letters for 2 weeks. After the 7-week drought of ( Read more... )

When is a seat not a seat? When it is at a TDCJ prison. There are benches outside the front office at Coffield, outside the perimeter fence, where I have sat before while waiting for lifts (some that turn up and some that dont). On Saturday, my visit finished before my friend's did, so I sat outside to wait for her, only to be told after a few ( Read more... )

I am so proud of Ray ~ we have set him up on Associated Content so that he can write stuff separately to me on my Helium account, and yesterday they published his first article! There is another one in the submission stage. Associated Content pay a small upfront payment of a few dollars, and then you get paid approx $1.50 per thousand page views.

( Read more... )

The day after our birthday, my brother-out-law Jay was involved in a car "accident" (not much of an accident really when the driver of the car Jay was in was drunk and was afterwards arrested) and suffered a smashed hip joint. So now we have matching birthdays and matching hips. Spooky eh ( Read more... )

Because just like jarmara  my birthday has spanned a whole week.

On Monday I got to spend a few hours with my dearest friend ebren  in the snowy wastes of Dartmoor, ably assisted by my mate Lisa who some of you met a couple of years ago around this time in Oxford.

Tuesday was quiet (snow stopped play in Wolverhampton with Silverether) but I did go to see 'Doubt ( Read more... )

Peter Purves, of Blue Peter and Crufts fame, 70 today

also

Timmy, Chad's guitar tech

and

my brother-out-law Jay, who is 44.


( Read more... )

I have a new channel for my research/penal reform activities. I have been made an honourary member of TX CURE; CURE is a national US organisation that has been around for about 35 years, aimed at improving prison conditions, rather like our Howard League and NACRO. CURE in TX has links with Baronness Stern, and is Chaired by a German lady  called ( Read more... )

If you had something you wanted to advertise, and someone said to you, "Give me the specific details by this date and I will advertise the thing for free for you in X many publications", it would sound a reasonable deal, no? But what if, after you had given them the specific details, by the agreed date, and then you found that your thing was not ( Read more... )