The Caerphilly Mafia

It is one of those Dad conversations that I wasn't quite expecting when he sat me down and told me he was in the Mafia.

There is no Italian, Sicilian, New Jersey-ian in my Dad. He's Plymouth-onian. Even the accent isn't right when he says "I'm gonna chisel your knee-caps....my lover."

It has come as a bit of a shock to discover his weekly meetings with "the boys", wasn't just about beer and women but about controling the boroughs crime. Apparently you need to get the balance right in terms of how much crime you create and deal with at the same time. You have to keep crime at a level that still creates employment for those that fight it but not too much that they actually solve crime.

If there was no crime a huge industrial employer would be lost. Crime provides jobs. Without crime there would be fewer police, fewer lawyers, fewer judges, fewer insurers, no prison wardens, no hand-cuff manufacturers (may be just the kinky kind). Tailors that supply uniforms, cooks that supply food, car companies that supply...cars would all loose orders, people who build and maintain all the buildings involved. Florists, where would they be if there wasn't a stab victim to remember outside KFC?! It's all about the chain. The chain of crime.
Crime affects us all sometimes directly but more often indriectly and we all end up paying for it, if not emotionally then, financially.

So my father helps to police the borough. He does this by meeting old men in a pub on a friday. These old men are pillars of the local community. Lawyers, judges, police, landlords, businessmen and do-gooders. How exactly they create and solve crime is a mystery I'm yet to uncover. So far I've only been invited to social functions that include a buffet and a pub lock-in but no discussion on the borough takes place. IT'S NOT THE MASONS. Let me just make that clear. However something is going on in the criminal underworld of Bargoed and the wider Caerphilly Borough. There's a battle brewing and I intend to find out how it's won and lost.

JC

Too long away from the pad

This annoys me every few months. I stop writing and then when my diary is at its fullest I wish to pepper this page with waffle. Expect an explosion on words here very shortly.