Given that I am no longer a number but a free woman it’s pretty unusual for me to find myself at the Probation office any more.  Sure, I drive past it on occasion, en route to town or wherever, but it’s not exactly somewhere you’d choose to visit.  You’ll not be surprised to learn that it’s a depressing sort of place, neutrally decorated so that all the marks show up on the walls and all the stains show up on the carpet, with posters up advertising all sorts of offending behaviour courses, schemes about giving up smoking/alcohol/drugs and information on what you have to do if you have a community service order.  And a sign stating tops must be worn at all times.  Lovely.

Today, though, for the second time in a few months I braved it because I had a meeting about some potential unpaid writing work for the Probation Service in my area.  Writing the whole Porridge series for this blog has re-awakened my interest in matters of criminal justice, you see, so rather than sitting around on my bum (as you are well aware I am incredibly proficient at) I thought I’d get off it and do some good.  Or something.

Portsmouth City Council has become something of a bastard in recent years, in particular when it comes to parking.  It used to be that you would have to pay in city car parks during daytime hours only.  Not any more.  Not only do you have to pay extortionate rates whenever you park now, you also find that, rather like rats, you are never more than 6 feet away from a parking attendant.  So, with 5 minutes to go before my meeting and as I was filling up the parking meter with about £450 worth of 10p pieces I was somewhat alarmed to see one of these attendants eyeing up The Beast (the Flaherty family car is big).  I’d only been there for 20 seconds, for the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake!  And where the hell did he come from?  He must have been hiding behind that Corsa!  When he started writing something down I panicked and loudly informed him, while still shovelling coins into the meter and giving him a Paddington hard stare, that it was my car.  He looked very disappointed.  Bastard.

All in all not the best of starts.  And next came the walk to the Probation office door.  I’ve been there many times, but if there are ever people outside smoking, and there usually are, it’s pretty intimidating.  It sounds snobbish of me, and I don’t mean to be, but I feel out of place there.  The people you see look as though they’ve fallen on hard times.  The conversations you hear are not like any conversations I’ve ever had.  Today three drunk people, two men and a woman smoked and talked about the job centre, manicures and breaching their licences.  Who’s drunk at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon, especially if they have a Probation appointment?

The problem is that I feel guilty for feeling this way.  They’re people, just like me and you.  And as I’m trying to style myself as some kind of ambassador for ex-offenders in the hope of altering the attitudes of the wider public, maybe I should have a little empathy, after all I’ve been through the system and then some.  But it’s so hard and I realise my hopes for being able to do something positive in the fight to reduce re-offending rates are a little idealistic.  This won’t stop me though and I’m determined to chip away at attitudes a little bit at a time.  But next time I have a meeting I might suggest we meet in the coffee shop…

Last night my Virgin TV box got stuck.  This happens quite regularly if I’m trying to watch something on TV Choice on Demand.  I’d made the mistake of watching 5 minutes of LA Ink because I was interested to see what Kat Von D looked like after her name coming up all over the TV and internet recently.  I didn’t need more than 5 minutes to come to the conclusion that she’s a skank.  I’d had my suspicions beforehand.  Anyway, it seems my Virgin box agreed because it wouldn’t work for ages after that and it was so upset it punished me by refusing to allow me to watch anything other than Hotel Babylon.  Now, I’ve never watched this before because it looks like pap so I was quite upset about it.  And then I saw it.  Darius from Pop Idol was on it (I didn’t watch that either) and he was “eyebrow acting”.

Eyebrow acting is something I’d only really noticed once before (though I’m sure it happens lots) and, to be honest with you, I had thought I was alone and that I’d made up the phrase.  A Google search, however, has set me straight, I am neither the first person to have noticed and I’m not the only person to call it that either.  Oh well.  Let me describe the phenomenon to you.  Eyebrow acting manifests in the over-actor, presumably to make them appear earnest and serious, but in fact making them look as though a pair of caterpillars are dancing a jig on their face.  Or making them look like those kids on the Cadbury’s advert and who knows what was the thinking behind that one?  Or the drumming gorilla for that matter.  Darius was pretty awful, his eyebrows were all over the place (in fact only Peter Serafinowicz would have done him better than he does himself) but by far the worst offender is Emma Watson who plays Hermione in Harry Potter.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that Hermione is the most irritating character in the history of all book or film (or both) characters, the actor they chose to portray her just happens to be incredibly irritating too with eyebrows that act with such gusto that they should probably have their own separate contract.

I know nothing about Emma Watson but I imagine she’s your typical stage school brat belonging to pushy parents and who takes themself rather seriously.  And waggle their eyebrows about to prove it.  She’s a bit of a ninny, really.  But if she does come from a stage school background that probably explains the eyebrows to a degree.  I found out from wikipedia that old Darius had been doing some stage work, musicals or something so I have come to conclusion that these thesps (if you can call them that) have a tendency to exaggerate their facial expressions for the benefit of the old dear in seat Z6 in whichever crappy theatre they’ve been appearing.  I doubt it has much effect other than to make them look very silly but hey, what do I know?  But don’t they have acting coaches to help them with the transition from stage to screen?  The old biddy in Z6 might not have noticed something was amiss but I certainly have.  If someone you knew well started waggling their eyebrows about when they talked to you wouldn’t you take them to one side and ask them if everything’s OK and suggest that maybe they should cut down on the Red Bull and double shots of espresso?  It’s not Am Dram for goodness’ sake, you’re on the telly!  People can see!