I have been summoned to HMP Slade for a Hearing on Thursday morning.
I do not know how I feel about this.
I spoke to a chap from the prison this morning. He had been asked to call me in case I wanted to have somebody with me whilst sentence was pronounced. I didn’t think I needed anybody, which was just as well, because it turned out that Thursday was his day off anyway.
I asked him what would happen, not in the sense of ‘will I get sacked?’ Some things are a foregone conclusion. I was just interested to hear about the procedure, the way the condemned man wants to know about the walk to the gallows.
He said that the Investigating Officer would talk about his discoveries, then the Governor might want to ask me some questions, and then he would decide what my Fate would be.
He said that the Governor likes honesty and integrity, and so to behave like that.
I was not nearly as sure as he was about this.
I think that I have got both honesty and integrity in shovelfuls. I would stand by my principles to the bitter end, even if I don’t have very many of them.
As for honesty, there has been a meme doing the rounds on Facebook which has been sent to me three times by people who have read it and thought of me. It is an interviewee being asked what his worst qualities might be. The interviewee thinks about it, and eventually says: “Honesty.” The interviewer looks puzzled and says that he does not think that honesty is a bad quality. The interviewee shrugs, and says: “I don’t give a f*** what you think.”
One of the reasons that I am fully expecting to be sacked is that I have written a letter packed with honest opinions and dispatched it for the Governor’s attention. It tells him how he could do his job better.
Obviously, after three days of working in the prison service, I am something of an expert. I am sure that he will be grateful for my contribution.
On the whole, I think honesty might be better abandoned in favour of courtesy. It might be more comfortable for everybody like that.
I am pleased that I am not more worried about it. We are going to go across in the camper van, on the theme of going out in a blaze of glory. Mark and the dogs are going to wait in the car park for me, and if the sun shines, we can go and walk on the beach afterwards.
We have spent much of today being out as well, so no newly exciting developments on the theme of Home Improvements. The new fridge vinyl will not reach us until Friday, so you will have to wait for marvellous photographs of our glorious new fridge.
On the plus side, if I have been sacked by then, I will be able to share them on Facebook in glorious Technicolour.
Today Mark’s car had to go for an MOT, so we went into Kendal. Mark took the car whilst I took some scratchy bras to Oxfam to be resold to African ladies who do not mind lace.
After that I bought some more of our nice filter coffee and we met up again at the glass shop to look for offcut bits of cheap mirror.
This was because you might remember that some years ago I was very much taken by a film we saw at the cinema. It made a lasting impression on me, and I have long wanted to put some of its ideas into practice.
The film was called Fifty Shades of Grey.
The chap in the film could hardly be described as a hero, actually he was a bit of a pillock mostly, but he had the most ingenious and magnificent wardrobe arrangement.
His shoes were stored in neat boxes. His ties were rolled and stored in drawers with dividers to stop them from flapping about all over the place. All of his suits were hung tidily on a rail, with space between them and a mirror behind.
It was the mirror which interested me. It had two functions. One was to show off clever camera angles, so that the hero could be posed in front of it but you did not see that the camera was there. The other was to reflect the light when he opened the wardrobe door, so that he could choose a suit easily in daylight, even though they were at the back of a cupboard.
Now that we have built a beautiful new cupboard, lots of things are going to be at the back of it.
I remembered Fifty Shades Of Grey longingly, and Mark said that he was always up for trying something new. If I wanted a life like Fifty Shades Of Grey, he said, that would be fine by him.
Of course I don’t want to live like Fifty Shades Of Grey. They lived in a big American city and went everywhere in a helicopter. That would be ridiculous in Windermere. I only ever go to the post office and Sainsbury’s, and walking works perfectly well for that.
Despite this obvious discrepancy, I have admired that wardrobe arrangement very much, so today we went to see if the glass shop had any mirror offcuts. It does not matter what size or shape a mirror is if it is behind your suits.
In our case it will not be behind suits anyway. It will be behind overalls and raincoats and jerseys with Winnie The Pooh on them.
The man had several smaller bits of mirror that he was happy to let us have. I did not think I ought to tell him that we wanted them in order to play at being Fifty Shades of Grey. He is very deaf and you have got to shout. We just said that it was for a back wall, and he nodded.
He is going to put them on the van tomorrow with the others.
We are even going to have a beautiful cupboard.
I have got another dream coming true.
