Things Fall Apart.

The title comes from Chinua Achebe's award-winning Nigerian novel, which I thought appropriate for this rusty fence. Although it still looks pretty sturdy to me.

Coincidentally, and to illustrate the point, on today's news I heard that Britain plans to spend around £1 million on 'sprucing up' current facilities in Nigerian prisons, which would enable the government to return about 400 Nigerian prisoners home to serve out the remainder of their sentence. The Government is offering to pay because current custody conditions in the West African nation are so poor it gives criminals here scope to oppose their removal on human rights grounds!

Apparently it costs $27000 a year to house a prisoner in Britain (more than it does to house a pensioner?) so it seems to be a worthwhile move, if my arithmetic is correct.

We visited Lagos for Mundy's Festschrift in 2005 and had excellent treatment from all the warm, welcoming people we met there.

What an interesting world we live in.