Matters of life and death

Last night I settled down with a plate of food and unpaused Come Dine With Me only to realise it was an episode I'd seen before, so was channel hopping a few minutes past the hour and tried one of the true crime channels I enjoy where a Couples Who Kill had just started. I read the mini blurb on the EPG, nope, didn't sound familiar... though by coincidence the man's name was the same as my penfriend's. Some of you already know where this is going, others may guess. Yes, despite never asking, never having been told and resisting every urge to check it out on line (because I felt I would then be communicating with the perpetrator of a crime rather than a person) clearly fate felt it was time I knew why Kostas was on Death Row...And now I do. What is there to be grateful for in this? Hmm, well for one thing it launched an interesting chat or two, including a touchingly perceptive comment from Bob on how I must have felt. I enjoyed those... Someone also asked me why I'd joined Human Writes and it was good to revisit that, especially in the light of new knowledge. (Simple...I was at home alone waiting to die. I went out and bought a Big Issue and there was an advert for people to befriend prisoners facing death alone. It seemed to be the one job for which I was qualified.)

You probably know by now I can find at least four sides to every coin*... Crime and punishment? How long have you got? Killing's wrong, right? But is all killing equally wrong? What about to put someone out of their suffering? What if you made them suffer? What about if they're not suffering now but they will do if you don't...or it's to save someone else's life? What if they really want to die and can't do it themselves(Tony Nicklinson)? What if they've killed people themselves and they really want to die (Ian Brady)? What if it's your job - you're an executioner or work in an assisted dying facility? What about a bodyguard? Policeman? Soldier? Soldier fighting on the other side? OK, so you've decided which sorts of killings count...now what are you going to do? Are you going to kill the killers? How? When? Where? What will you do to them if not? Is it kinder to kill them than to lock them up or vice versa? Who benefits? Who doesn't? To some, I know, it all seems very simple and clear but for many of us the moral maze has high and thorny hedges on its convoluted twists and turns. I considered some of the possible scenarios when I signed up to be a penfriend...including that they might protest their innocence...and that that might actually be true!

I have issues with the notion of 'just deserts'.For the defining of a person by their deeds. Find me a care home kid who doesn't! But it's one thing to have issues and ideals and another to live by them. I'm grateful for the chance to try. There have been many people left my life because they didn't feel I came up to scratch in some way, failed to please, failed to fit the nice box they'd made for me. There have been a few who have pretended to be friends for some rather unfriendly purpose of their own. Human Writes is not a dating agency. You don't look at snaps and rap sheets and choose your con...someone is assigned to you and I've always given thanks that Kostas is articulate and intelligent, interesting and encouraging to me in my struggles with ill health. His crimes could have been something I would have found much harder to deal with so I'm grateful for that.

Changing the subject somewhat I came home yesterday afternoon to find this on the stairs...I know it's a bit of a rough neighbourhood but even so I'm glad it only belongs to a pre-school pirate!



Today I have to go out in the pouring rain for a mammogram. There should be a law against that surely? I'm grateful the unit is parked not far away and that it only happens every few years. The mammograms not the rain!



*(inside, outside, front and back!)