I had wrongly assumed, after resigning from my post as Chairman of the gold award winning Grimsby in Bloom committee last week, that life would become a little quieter now. More time I thought, to sit and read. More time perhaps to write down some old thoughts, think up some new ones and most certainly more time to enjoy the solitude that walks hand in hand with my professional life as a self employed gardener in Northern Lincolnshire. But, it seems to have been yet another week of tying up loose ends, tedious committee meetings and flamboyant talks to Ladies Groups, all of which could easily have made their way towards becoming the theme for this weeks Sunday Night blog, but, after receiving an unexpected midweek letter a couple of days ago, I really couldn't write about anything else and when I finally get around to telling you all about it, you'll begin to understand why.
It'll be twenty years in a few weeks time, since I was incarcerated within Her Majesty's Prison, HMP Hull. I'd been attempting to smuggle cannabis into the country when I was caught by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise Officers and sentenced to twelve months in jail. "Smuggler had drugs in underpants" ran the headline in the local paper. It was, as you can imagine, a very low point in my life. Her Majesty's prisons are not at all the drink and drug drenched dens of debauchery which the media presents them to be, it was bleak and it was severe.
If ever you find yourself travelling along the main road out of Hull City Centre travelling eastwards towards Spurn Point, but before you reach Curlew Corner on the Salt End peninsular, you'll notice the large and imposing Victorian prison complex on your left hand side, it's 30ft high brick walls topped with razor wire mark the boundary between two entirely separate worlds.
It was built over 140 years ago to punish and contain wrongdoers of a very different age, in a time when the punishments didn't always fit the crimes. As part of my own punishment, I was locked into a small, grey, stinking cell for 23 hours a day, accompanied by two other petty criminals, strangers to me from the East Riding of Yorkshire. We were allowed one shower a week, one hours exercise in the prison yard a day, (if it wasn't raining) and a plastic bucket for a toilet, let me assure you, it was not a holiday camp and there were no easy chairs and television sets for every inmate, even though the very worst of the tabloids like to tell you there are.
There was one barred window, quite high up on the outside wall of our tiny, three man cell, opposite to the heavy steel door which opened every morning to the accompanying call of "C'mon now you lot, slop out time!".The window had obviously been designed with the intention of being just too high up the cell wall for inmates to look out of easily, but if we took it in turns, all three of us could spend a few moments every day, before our legs began to ache, watching real life pass by on the busy road, three floors below. By standing with one foot on the bridge of the bunk bed and the other on the flimsy, prison issue table, with our hands gripping tightly on to the bars on the window which separated us from the normal world outside, we could catch a glimpse at the life that we were missing.
As you'd imagine, with a Victorian prison, the barred window didn't have the luxury of glass and more than once a flurry of snow flakes carried on a swirling North Easterly blizzard dampened the pillow of my unfortunate disgruntled cell mate on the top bunk. Conversely, that same unforgiving wind which brought with it the snow flakes, also took away with it the unwelcome smells which came from the 3 plastic buckets with their 3 ill-fitting plastic lids, designed more to hide the contents from sight than to contain any of their smells.
I hope that I don't appear to be complaining and moaning about my lot, or anything like that. I done wrong, I knew that then and I know that now. I suppose that, in a small way my recent attempts at voluntary work over the last few years have always been founded on my need for acceptance within society.
So you can imagine the smile on my face last Wednesday, almost 20 years to the day since I began my punishment within the red brick Victorian walls of Hull Jail, when I opened an unexpected letter from one of Her Majesty's Ambassadors, the Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire.
My wife Jacquie and I, the Lord Lieutenant explained, have had our names put forward to him for doing good work in the area and he wanted to know if we were available on a few dates in mid June/July as Her Royal Majesty, Elizabeth II, Queen of England would like to invite us to one of Her Summer Garden Parties held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
There are times in everyone's life when you feel as though you've reached the bottom. But, one thing I can carry from my own experience is that the dual burdens of regret and remorse are far too heavy a load for any of us to bear for a whole life time, look forward to the future and what you can become. A leopard can change its spots.
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