Was running round town this morning doing my errands, one of which was to get Terry to put some Freon in the car's air conditioning, which hasn't been very cold. It doesn't matter all that much running round in Shawnee but I am thinking of taking one or two trips before the days start closing in too much. There are quite a lot of places I'd like to see, but won't get to anything like all of them.
This day in history...... August 12 1964. Charlie Wilson, one of the Great Train Robbers was sprung from Winson Green Prison (a maximum security prison, how did they do it, one wonders suspiciously)
Who in my generation remembers the Great Train Robbery? I'd venture to say "everyone". It was the biggest heist of its time, and they got just over £2.5m. Obviously, relative to my income, that is a lot of money, and it was considered an enormous amount then, but today it doesn't seem that much. The robbery took place on 8 August 1963 when 15 masked men attacked the Glasgow to London Royal Mail train near Buckinghamshire.
And don't we all remember Ronnie Biggs, even if we have forgotten the rest of the gang. On the night of the robbery Biggs was a passenger in the stand-by getaway car, and didn't get to see the haul until they were all assembled at the hideout, at Leatherslade farm. And I remember reading they were playing monopoly with real money. Biggs's share was £147,000 - it hardly seems worth it - especially as someone was supposed to burn down the farm but screwed up, so the police got fingerprints, three weeks later he was arrested with 11 other members of the gang, and they got sentences of 30 years.
He served 15 months before escaping from Wandsworth Prison in 1965, scaling the wall with a rope ladder and dropping onto a waiting removal van. (I remember all that) He went first to Brussels by boat, then to Paris where his wife joined him, and he got new identity papers and underwent plastic surgery (which took £44,000 of his £147,000, surely he could have disguised himself for a lot less than that, and just as effectively). They lived for a while in Australia but then the law caught up with him - led by Slipper of the Yard, and don't we all remember him, one of the most famous and decorated Metropolitan Police officers - and leaving the family behind he fled first to Panama, then on to Brazil, which didn't have an Extradition Treaty with Britain, so he was safe, and to make sure he stayed safe from arrest when the extradition treaty was ratified, he had a son from a Brazilian woman, which ensured he could stay in Brazil, because Brazilian law did not allow the parent of a Brazilian child to be extradited.
As a felon though he couldn't work, so he used to make money hosting barbeques and telling his story. He became quite the folk hero, but Jack Mills the train driver who was coshed with a metal bar never fully recovered from his injuries, and a lot of people remembered that. He died in 1970.
In April 1981, Biggs was kidnapped by a gang of British ex-soldiers. The boat they took him aboard suffered mechanical problems off Barbados, and the stranded kidnappers and Biggs were rescued by the Barbados coastguard and towed into port in Barbados. The kidnappers hoped to collect a reward from the British police; however, like Brazil, Barbados had no extradition treaty with the United Kingdom and Biggs was sent back to Brazil.
In 2001 Biggs announced to The Sun newspaper that he would be willing to return to the UK and they paid for his return on a private jet. He said he wanted to walk into a pub in Margate as an Englishman and order a pint of bitter. I don't know how he thought he was going to do that, he still had 28 years of his 30 year sentence to serve, and was promptly arrested on landing.
In November 2001 he was very ill, and appealed to the Prison Governor for release on compassionate grounds, but Home Office policy is that they can only be released if it is thought they have only three months left to live, and the Governor wasn't buying it. He was subsequently released in August 2009 and promptly got better.
He eventually died in December 2013 aged 84.
Phew! that was longer than I thought it was going to be.
Near the end of the above we had a power failure for a couple of hours, a transformer went down. My eyes didn't adjust to the dark, or at least they took some time, everything was pitch black and I thought I'd gone blind. I stumbled out of the computer room, lost my bearings and walked into a wall, which was a bit painful. I keep a couple of battery operated lamps on window sills because one never knows here when the power might fail, and I managed to grope my way to one of them.
As a felon though he couldn't work, so he used to make money hosting barbeques and telling his story. He became quite the folk hero, but Jack Mills the train driver who was coshed with a metal bar never fully recovered from his injuries, and a lot of people remembered that. He died in 1970.
In April 1981, Biggs was kidnapped by a gang of British ex-soldiers. The boat they took him aboard suffered mechanical problems off Barbados, and the stranded kidnappers and Biggs were rescued by the Barbados coastguard and towed into port in Barbados. The kidnappers hoped to collect a reward from the British police; however, like Brazil, Barbados had no extradition treaty with the United Kingdom and Biggs was sent back to Brazil.
In 2001 Biggs announced to The Sun newspaper that he would be willing to return to the UK and they paid for his return on a private jet. He said he wanted to walk into a pub in Margate as an Englishman and order a pint of bitter. I don't know how he thought he was going to do that, he still had 28 years of his 30 year sentence to serve, and was promptly arrested on landing.
In November 2001 he was very ill, and appealed to the Prison Governor for release on compassionate grounds, but Home Office policy is that they can only be released if it is thought they have only three months left to live, and the Governor wasn't buying it. He was subsequently released in August 2009 and promptly got better.
He eventually died in December 2013 aged 84.
Phew! that was longer than I thought it was going to be.
Near the end of the above we had a power failure for a couple of hours, a transformer went down. My eyes didn't adjust to the dark, or at least they took some time, everything was pitch black and I thought I'd gone blind. I stumbled out of the computer room, lost my bearings and walked into a wall, which was a bit painful. I keep a couple of battery operated lamps on window sills because one never knows here when the power might fail, and I managed to grope my way to one of them.
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