Dear Father Mayo & Associated Collective,

Life in winter for a pair of young teenage boys can be pretty boring… My childhood home of the Isle of Wight was certainly no exception; in fact in this particular place it's the complete opposite of the bustling summer which is full of fun and 100,000s of visitors.

My story turns the clocks back to the early 1970s and a run of the mill November evening when the lack of entertainment left me and my friends staring into an abyss which felt like it might last an eternity. As such I have to admit to a back catalogue of deeds so numerous that until now it's felt almost pointless seeking any sort of forgiveness. However, as time moves on and the grim reaper has started to come for at least some of my peers I think I had better make a start so as to improve my prospects for the future!

I don't want to use our real names as we now have boys of our own; hence if they should ever perpetrate similar deeds we may need to rely on the moral high ground in order to hand out just punishment!!! Plus there are some families that might still remember! So for the purposes of this confession I'll make up two names let's say Casey and Jones, it was popular back then!

Most winter nights we would arrange to meet at about 6 O'clock, by our local telephone box and as long as our mums had agreed that we could go to the others home for the evening we were then free to start our program of mis-deeds.

About 1973 we decided we would walk our local neighbourhood in search of front gardens with gnomes; on finding these we would usually do one of two things… If there were a lot of gnomes and other accessories, we would typically transfer the whole garden display to the plainest looking garden nearby. If there were only one or two, we would swap one of them for another from another garden that might be a mile or more away. In this case after a couple of weeks we would swap them back.

We thought this was hilarious and spent many a happy hour enjoying the thought of gnome holidays or neighbourly disputes. However as I said earlier, this activity was only one of many and I don't want or need forgiveness for
this essentially harmless fun. Especially as Noel Edmonds was actively encouraging this type of attack on the garden guardians around this time.
One night while walking down my street on a gnome hunt I became aware that one particular type of wrought iron gate with black painted swirls of metal was quite common and a pair or more occurred in almost every street (probably courteously of the nearby blacksmiths who made them to order, This sort of hideous wrought iron work was very fashionable then). It was then that a really sinister idea popped into my mind and I ran home to fetch a tape measure.

For the next few weeks we went everywhere trying to locate pairs of wrought iron gates and built up a list of locations and sizes. To our delight we found a pair of gates just under 5ft wide and another pair of identical ones that where just over 5.2ft wide. We came back to confirm our findings in daylight and then the stage was set!

The next Friday evening (we were allowed out to midnight on the weekend), we lifted a gate off its hinges and carried it nearly two miles to the location of the almost matching pair and did a straight swap. Another two miles later the deed was half done. Now we had a pair of gates that only just latched closed and another that clumsily banged together and jammed. After a further two weekends we completed the full deed to create a pair of gates that couldn't quite reach each other and another pair that banged together and wouldn't close at all!

What fun we had imagining the confusion of the poor owners, who we were sure would never guess what had happened as the distance was far enough to ensure that it was unlikely that their tales of grief would cross. After two weeks of chuckling we decided it was time to reverse the deed and cause even more confusion.

After two miles carrying the first quite heavy gate back to its original home, we found to our horror that the second owner had demolished the pillar and installed a new gate post in order to accommodate the now smaller gates. Not knowing what to do we decided that it was best to keep at least one household happy and we spent the early hours of the morning swapping both gates.

One pair now fitted perfectly and the other pair now overlapped. Because it took us until later than 2 O'clock in the morning to achieve the full switch we were both grounded for nearly a month. At the time I thought that was punishment enough, but now I feel the need to clear my debts to society I would be grateful of a pardon.

We never intended a permanent change and I would say to those unsympathetic judges (Sister Pauline) that the mitigating circumstances of total boredom were partly to blame. If you can't find it in your heart to forgive this mishap then I may as well take the rest of my problems to my grave.
However, if you can forgive this minor slip then I would be willing to serialise my confessions further?

I await your verdict?

Casey and Jones.