Random facts of fineness

Ok, the first one really is random. There's a Trackword puzzle in the Radio Times - a nine letter square to make words from 'tracking' the letters in order from adjacent or diagonal squares. There's a long word that uses all of the letters too and that's often hard to spot though sometimes if you look at the list of words you have found they give you a clue...it might even be made up of two of them...if you've got 'black' plus 'bird' for example or you might have 'lifting' and notice the remaining letters are 'u' an 'p'. Anyway, this time I had a few words but not the nine letter one until suddenly I made the connection between two that were in front of me and said out loud in that bright tone you do when you have one...'brainwave!' ha ha!

The other thing is that I have received my first letter from a new penfriend. He's a prisoner on Death Row, a real one in Florida not the one I sometimes quip I'm on. I'd been thinking of maybe trying to find some new virtual friends since the old flesh and blood ones so rarely communicate now, and then I saw an ad in the Big Issue for an organisation that provides penfriends for these inmates, some of whom have no contact with the outside world and can live locked up for twenty three hours a day for years and years and years. Never mind whether you think the death penalty is right or wrong, or if you consider some people deserve it. As far as I'm concerned no matter how many wrongs you put together they still don't really make a right. And if sometimes I feel cooped up and kept from things I love and that, whatever d:ream may have sung about in some cases things can only get worse, then their situation is at least as grim... So it seemed a simple humanitarian act to offer to write to someone if correspondence was pretty much all they could do for entertainment.

However I'd been a tad worried that maybe it might seem a chore. You don't get to choose a person you like the sound of (probably best for all manner of reasons!), you just get sent a name, and even the most open minded of us might have some negative assumptions to make about the sort of person that might be attached to. But I'd sent a little introductory letter to this name and had a pleasant, articulate, intelligent letter back to fingers crossed we can do each other a little good while we are here...

If you think I'm odd that's perfectly OK. It's my blog and I can smile at what I want to!