Old Friends and Murderers

I arranged a few weeks ago to meet up with two former work collegues for lunch. Caroline who i have been in contact with since leaving my last job has been lovely and she was still in contact with John who i worked with 18 years ago in one of the homes. He was working in social care but really wanting to be an actor and he left after a few years and gradually we lost contact so it was about 16 17 years since i had seen him, but we picked up as though it were yesterday.

He made a meal for us at his place, was lovely fish followed by pasta, then cheese and finally a merangue. We talked and talked, John is now working in television, his background in social care combined with his acting experience lent well to working in documentaries and you may remember a dispatches programme he was in a couple of years ago playing an undercover social worker to find out how things were in that profession? He also put together a programme on Winnie, oh sorry i don't remember the surname but her son was killed by Ian Brady and geez my memory the woman ah! Myra Hindley. He was looking at the awful experience from the perspective of the victims, he found her unlike reported, to be very much together and tough even though she died before finding out where her son was buried she was not as sad and distraught as was muted he got to know her well and really liked her. 

As part of the programme he wrote to Brady and got a reply, in fact he had these letters still and he showed them to us. It is a singular experience to have in your hands a hand written letter penned by one of the most notorious and reviled people in the country. In it he was commenting on all the programmes made about him and obviously sees himself as maligned by the law and process. He apparently is deeply psychotic and has no empathy, everything important in his life is about him and the letters themselves were even a bit of a game with him though John himself wrote in a way that he knew would elicit a response. Brady also in his letter alluded to a book on serial killers.... that he has written himself! i guess it's searchable on Amazon!?

The discussion on his programmes swept here and there to the point where between us we were thinking of ways that my experience with cancer could be used to some good. If anything helpful can come from my experience i am all for it, so we are going to get together to seriously consider what angle could be presented that the commissioners would see as a good programme. I have said we can do this as long as i can mention bowel cancer and beating bowel cancer somewhere in the mix.....we shall see how far this goes it is likely to be blown out of the water at the first hearing but you don't know if you don't try!

Incredibly the time flew by we arrived at one and then suddenly at 7.30 John's partner Bernardo arrived home and we realised how long we had been catching up on gossip, finding out the changes in each others lives and talking about cancer and death, sounds morbid but it wasn't just frank open discussion. 

It was so so good to see John again and we are going to meet again soon, he was always someone i had no difficulty getting on with and it is great to have him back in my circle of friends again!