Nothing like a spot of role-playing on a Tuesday afternoon is there? I don't mean Dungeons & Dragons, I was giving my brother a hand putting some glass into an upstairs window, so I donned the role of glazier for a while. My presence was required for 2 o'clock having been assured that all would be ready and I would simply have to help him lift the glass into place and hold it while he got the beading nailed on. Of course, it wasn't ready at all, it quickly became apparent that there was old putty needing chiselled out first, which took a good half hour anyway.
My parents house (where my brother STILL lives) is close to the High Street you see, and so my brother was fitting sound-proof toughend glass into his bedroom windows. Sound-proofed because there are several pubs in the vicinty, and toughened because of the dregs of society which spew out of those pubs at closing time, throwing bottles and cans all over. He's seen and heard it all from his bedroom. People stripping right outside the house, pissing in the middle of the street, guys getting their heads kicked in by gangs, people smashing the windows and trying to kick the front door down. Yes, it's just another friendly North east fishing town.
I was going to mention something good I saw on telly recently, but I can't remember what it was, so perhaps it wasn't so good after all. I guess that's the benchmark for telly goodness, being able to remember what you watched the night before. OK, I've just remembered what it was, so it was quite good, even for Channel 5. It was "Banged Up Abroad". It featured 2 poor English saps who got pushed into being drugs mules. Before they knew it, they were on a flight to Venezuela and spending money that wasn't theirs. Of course it all ended in disaster and they spent 4 years of a 10 year sentence in prison. The prisons in Venezuela are run by the prisoners who have guns, grenades and such like, and people are killed daily. They were allowed out eventually to look for work and promptly fled the country. A harsh lesson though. I'm sure they won't try that again!
