life tricks – Write Up My Street

During the infamous fun that wasn’t the pandemic lockdown, like a lot of other bored people at home I got my ass onto TikTok, not so much for my own personal content, but to scroll endlessly and laugh at all the other far more social media creative types on there.

But randomly one day a couple of years later, this entirely legit reel appeared (and yes I checked it all out) asking for someone to write to a life sentence prisoner in a jail in California. I can’t say anymore than that for privacy reasons. And no I hadn’t lost my tiny mind, been watching too much OITNB or fancied a bit of rough on a dark jailbreak night. He was about my age and no, zero attraction, I just thought well… I like writing and he said he loved to read and history and stories. Maybe I could do this thing for someone I will never meet.

And so I wrote to him, no personal details of my address, all through a secure platform set up by the US prison system. Then one day he wrote back and since then we write pretty much every week and I’ve slowly got to know more about him, about his family, his life before he got put away, for now what is over 29 years, and how from the other side of the world we have become sort of friends.

He tells me about his daily life, his cell mate who is also a Latino, his daughter with whom he has now rekindled his relationship- he did some terrible things when he was much younger for which she rightly struggled to trust him again. His son, who is in the US military and quite high ranking and all the comings and goings of yard life in searing heat and his work in the prison kitchens. He’s told me about the 18 years he spent in a high security solitary cell, with only concrete walls and a small skylight so high he could never even touch it. Those years were in part to segregate him from gang members and the risk to his life, as well as meting out his punishment.

But one day I had an idea as he literally devours books and in particular history. I’m a geographer by qualification and I decided to combine the two subjects, but take him on a mini tour of the world – choosing 30 places I’d been to, telling him the history of each, its geography and also a story to add the personal perspective of my time in those countries.

I have his prison PO Box address so every other week or so, I’d pepper his prison platform messages with a real bit of snail mail. The stories lit up his life and he saved each one until after work, reading them on his bunk. I sent him a map of the world with each place listed and marked on, so he could see where we were going to visit on his own ‘world tour’. My idea was to take him to all the places he’d never get to see. I had printed around 4 Polaroid style pictures for each place from my own travel photos and so each story could come alive a little with actual pictures.

One of mine from Siena, Tuscany

It took about a year to complete them all and we both had so much fun, both for me writing them and reliving all those years and holidays and adventures, but also for him it became something to look forward to. And you can argue after what he did, he deserves nothing at all, but I don’t judge and I now know some of what went down. What was also funny was, anything that arrives into the Prison Postal system, as a printed piece of mail, has to be read and approved by someone in the office. Now bear in mind some of these stories were over 4 or 5 pages of A4 long, he one day messaged me to say the most recent letter had been impounded as they said it was printed on cotton. A risk that it could potentially be impregnated with narcotics. We did laugh as it was a bog standard sheet from WH Smiths, but it meant I had to resend it again. This summer I was passing a hand made notepaper shop in Tuscany and started laughing at the shop window… of course I took a photo and sent it to him.

Not to be used for Inmate Correspondence

He told me when he maybe one day leaves, and he’s possibly up for parole in January, as he has done some serious work over many years to get to even being considered, that the letters and photos are one of the only things he will take with him. They’re all now pasted into a notebook and he shares them with his friends. He once told me, ‘we don’t know people like you.’ I sat with that thought for a while, life is full of weirdness and I don’t believe totally in coincidences, people come our way for all kinds of reasons and whether we realise that or even learn from it, is our choice. He even shares my photos with his support groups to illustrate how they have helped him and some of the funny and not so amusing stories we’ve told each other. But also of their importance to him in changing his mindset and perspective on life. And me, I’ve now got a slightly different friend.

We talk a lot about films, and they are allowed to watch some inside – as a now better prisoner he has a tablet, and providing they aren’t hugely violent etc he can view them. Each story, I tried where possible to reference a film he could later watch to give the story of that place some wider context, give it something to bring it alive. So we went around with so many different ones – from The Flinstones, Almodovar classics through to several Bond films, including Quantum of Solace, Spectre (Siena and Mexico City) and also The Living Daylights, which has its opening sequence in Gibraltar.

Gibraltar in The Living Daylights

It’s theme song is about facing the darkness of the world and trying to cope with insecurity and loss. It tells us that we cannot judge another’s life until you have lived theirs.

Comes the morning, and the headlights fade away

Hundred thousand people, I’m the one to blame

I’ve been waiting long for one of us to say

Save the darkness, let it never fade away

In the living daylights

Lyrics by: Morten Harket ‘The Living Daylights’ Sung by Ah-Ha

We also both love music and when I can, I add a song in too – the Gibraltar one for instance, included the story of my uncle, who was a taxi driver. He was picking up a fare from the docks one day, waiting in a line as passengers disembarked from the QE2. A very beautiful and elegant lady got into his cab. He asked her if she would mind if he listened to a Maria Callas broadcast, as she was his all time favourite. If you’ve been reading my blogs from the start you will know my uncle and I used to listen to her cassette tapes when I rode with him in his old Mercedes around southern Spain and Gib. The beautiful lady said yes and as the music was playing, my uncle realised she was singing in the back, in absolutely perfect unison. Now in those days there was no social media including TikTok (where this all started) and pictures on the news or papers only now and then. But there in the back of his cab singing Rigoletto, Act 1 Gaultier Malde – Caro Nome, was Maria Callas herself.

If you’ve watched the incredible film, The Shawshank Redemption, you will know the scene this made me think of, where Andy locks himself in the governors office, puts on a record of “Sull’aria … che soave zeffiretto” which is a duettino, or a short duet, from act 3, scene X, of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492,

Andy Dufresne played by Tim Robbins

Red (Morgan Freeman), famously narrates;

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

The obvious connection and irony between this story, prison life and my friend far across The Pond was not lost on either of us. We had a few laughs in our next messages.

And so, if you have a minute listen to this, and I hope for a moment it sets you free, as Maria sang like no other beautiful bird;

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/5XRuaotyEFWJ36A3V5HscZ?utm_source=generator

Maria Callas

Years ago, I used to play Pontoon with my father, he was an avid card game player, and while Bridge left me napping on the sofa with boredom (never got past the snooze-worthy basics), I loved playing this particular game with him. The 5 Card Trick is a special aspect of Pontoon that adds to the challenge. Understanding this can help you develop your game. To achieve a 5 Card Trick, you must collect five cards without exceeding a total value of 21, which requires a delicate balance and careful decision-making, and a lot of sniggering at our particular card table.

If you manage to gather five cards under or equal to 21, it counts as a 5 Card Trick. This hand is highly valued and often stands out compared to other hands with a total of 21. Each time you decide to twist, you’re working towards forming this distinctive hand.

Now my papa was, unlike me, little Miss Dyscalculia here, a steely mathematician and somehow, to his dismay he had not only produced someone who was shit at maths, but also horrific at science (he was an industrial pharmacist who studied at Imperial in London). But he didn’t just have a clever mind, he snuck in the sneaky parental trick of helping me a bit with my number ineptness, while dealing on top of that the family tradition of being ultra-competitive. In all he had cleverly found a game that he and I could really enjoy together. The keeping the tally bit for me, played into my will to win, as well as track over time, who won last time, it was like another edge to the game, having those rolling score cards and league tables. It was a smashing way of giving me some number confidence back, as well as spending time with one of my favourite people on the planet.

When my father died, and we were sitting down deciding who had what from the house. I asked for the antique card table, it’s one of those ones that swivels around and opens up with a lovely green baize circle inside. But when I eventually got it home, the absolute gem in my hand was one of our old score cards, still tucked inside the table drawer with a wedge of old wax crayon we’d used to mark the cards. It was like holding my very own King of Hearts.

But more recently, I have just binge watched my way through Sneaky Pete on Netflix. No spoilers but it’s about a confidence trickster, and this got me thinking about not just those sly types that slide into your life over the years, but particularly how money and control, amongst other abhorrence’s makes some people turn into absolute wankers, of this there is no denying.

I’ve met a few tricky sods in my time, but sometimes I’ve trusted my belief in humanity rather than my gut instinct, and you know that’s okay too, it’s their badness, their trickery not yours or mine. I’ll let you into a secret, you can worry yourself about what’s been, the trick dear reader, is to decide how it’s going to be. At the end of the Sneaky Pete series and without giving it all away, we see him realise a lot of things and that in one way or another is a learning for him. By repeating his tricks over and over and by teaching others he sees the value in… well, you will need to watch it to find out exactly what. But it deals back to my experience with my father, that practice is in itself a learning trick, while achieving self-belief is another altogether.

From ‘Sneaky Pete‘ (Netflix)

But what about the tricks your body or mind can play on itself. Fairly recent social media has been covering the so-called rapture, most of which was absolutely hilarious. But some people actually fall for this nonsense, and I’m not talking about your faith but the really mind-bending bollocks that this was.

Religion has a real and defining place in many people’s lives, not least of all mine. I’d go so far as to say, that particular faith aside, being brought up with a belief taught me to be a better, kinder and more honest person. Most people I know will tell you; I find it impossible to lie, and that’s not some religious guilt, it’s just an honest to goodness default setting to be truthful. And that for me is a good trick to have up your sleeve, and no I’m not going to say ‘the truth shall set you free’, but a lie, in my book takes away the person you are fibbing to, their own right to choose based on the truth. If you tell someone you are well, when you are actually sick, for instance, it takes away their ability to care or to help.

I’ve rambled off track here a bit, as usual… but what I wanted to say, that finding your trick, that ace up your sleeve, be that a post-it note stuck to your forehead, or a rhyme that helps you remember; – that version of your own card trick, which can be as mind bending as a mathematicians puzzle or finding your own equivalent of that old Pontoon scorecard, to remind you, that like me, you can at least now add up to 21. There’s no gambling with those odds, but your chances are always good if you play life with truth and love at the centre of your deck.

How do I do it, what’s my trick with for instance my recent country-moving decision. Yes, I get scared sometimes, like for instance, have I done the maths correctly (eeek) have I got enough in the tin to live off until I shuffle off this earth? Fear is just that, it’s a mind trick – it’s a feeling rather than a reality, the reality is I’ve got this far on my own, and now moved to another country. So, excuse me if I dust off the superwoman pants even for a moment.

Tricks aren’t just for the brave or the calculating miscreants, we all have them up our sleeves for when we need them. Call it self-belief if you want to.

You can go your own way

You can be true

You can go your own way

You can be true

Lyrics and Song: ‘Sail with Ease’ by Liam Bailey from Sneaky Pete, soundtrack

P.S My papa was one for some hilarious top tips, he once told me while helping with the Sunday lunch, that the best trick to get clean finger nails was to make a crumble. And that is exactly the person I got my sense of humour from, …well, I did warn you.

Follow me at: @write.upmystreet

Category: life tricks

Rigoletto Redemption

Five Card Trick