For many of us, as we grow older and collapse helplessly into the waiting arms of Lady Dementia, the Greek Goddess of Forgetfulness, we face the possibility of having to spend what’s left of our lives in a care home.
This can be a grim prospect. For one thing it costs what’s left of our money, or what money our families might have, to pay the fees.
Fortunately I have devised an alternative.
What we have to do is commit a murder most foul and be sent to prison on a one-way ticket.
In the Isle of Man this means taking up residence in our spanking brand new Jurby Jug where it will cost us nothing at all.
They can take our freedom away from us. But they can’t take our money.
(Sorry about the spanking remark. I should say that birching is no longer prison punishment for bad behaviour).
We can expect the best standards of physical and mental care by the medical staff and also looking after us will be the warders who will be only too anxious us to keep us happy and contented.
They don’t like prison riots you know, even by a bunch of old age pensioners.
We can expect reasonably good food. No bread and water these days.
Well, I think there isn’t – I am open to correction on this – and there will be exercise out of doors in the much vaunted superior climate of the Northern Plain. This will make us healthier and help us to live longer.
This won’t do down well with the Council of Ministers I’m afraid.
I imagine they will still have to keep on paying us our pensions, even in prison.
At the same time the warders will have no fear of us trying to escape.
We will know we are better off where we are.
We will also have our families coming to see us and bringing us some of life’s little luxuries – of all kinds if they are smart enough to get some of this stuff in through security.
All right, I hear what you say. You think there is a drawback, a basic fault in the whole thing.
It must be, quite simply, that we have to murder somebody in the first place. I beg to disagree.
Obviously it will have to be somebody who thoroughly deserves it, in our view.
I, for one, have already chosen my intended victim. But please, don’t ask me to say who it is.
It’s meant to be a surprise for heaven’s sake!
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A remarkable popular music story has come to life in the Isle of Man and today it is exclusively revealed in the Examiner.
A Kirk Michael reader, Geoff Kerrison, says he has found a hitherto unknown Beatles’ album of songs composed for the Manx market.
They include:
‘Ticket to Bride’
‘Day Kipper’
‘We Don’t Do It In Tromode’
‘Hey St Jude’s’
‘Eleanor Regaby’
‘Don’t Let Me Dhoon’
‘The Ronague Winding Road’
‘I Wanna Be Your Mann’
Geoff tells me he believes there are more of these Manx Beatles numbers hidden away and other Examiner readers might come up with them.
I hope so.
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A letter in the Daily Mail from Vera Dugdale of Kenilworth in Warwickshire told how in the 1950s she and her husband spent their honeymoon in the Isle of Man but they didn’t get to their hotel until the early hours of the morning and they found it closed with no answer to the doorbell.
All they could find for shelter was a toilet in the yard.
She adds: ‘ We sat there until the hotel opened.’
Just sat there?
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The latest of Karl Campbell’s Manx crosswords was in the Crusader: Characters looking around race (9) – LETTERING.
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Church notice: ‘Pot luck supper Sunday at 5pm – prayers and medication to follow.’