It’s remarkably rare that my immune system lets anything untoward any further than the garden gate. Unfortunately yesterday it seems it left the gate and front door wide open.
I began to gather something was wrong yesterday afternoon – when a strange feeling – a chill, and odd aches – slowly spread throughout my body. Of course I carried on regardless – because I’m an idiot like that. I’m still carrying on today.
The usual “hack” would probably be chocolate and lucozade. I’m leaning towards redbush tea with honey in it (if we have some).
(half an hour passes while I deal with some work stuff, and then find myself standing in the kitchen watching my eldest daughter making a bacon sandwich)
“Is there any bacon left?”
“Two pieces – in the fridge”
And that’s how I ended up making a bacon sandwich with tomato ketchup on it, rather than anything remotely healthy. I imagine my stomach – which has done nothing but cramp all morning – will have words with me later.
While cooking the bacon – and wondering what I might write about in this blog post, it occurred to me that I had not told the story of what happened on the green outside our house earlier in the week.
I probably need to set the scene first.
We live in a wealthy town on the River Thames. The kind of town that proudly enters “best roundabout flowers” competitions, has a rowing regatta on the river, and other such nonsense. The kind of town filled with company directors, retired stockbrokers, and the occasional well-known actor or celebrity. Also the kind of town that doesn’t want teenagers to exist.
It’s probably worth noting that the teenagers in this instance didn’t really help themselves either.
Over the last month, a group of young people that had already been issued a court order banning them from congregating in one part of town began to arrive on the green outside our house. While working each day, I look out over the green, but rarely notice anything going on. I heard them. I heard more inventive uses of the F and C word than I’m willing to admit – and was shocked when looking up to see where it might be coming from, to find it mostly pouring from the mouths of young teen girls.
It didn’t take long for a couple of local Mums – who take their toddlers to the playpark in the corner of the green – to face off against the teenagers. I saw a running battle one day – with one Mum that lost her temper having a full on slanging match with them – and them surrounding her as she held her young child.
I don’t know that the teenagers ever did anything, other than intimidate anybody else wishing to use the park.
I suppose there was the football goal that got disintegrated. It’s not the first though. We had a football goal on our driveway for a while when our kids were young – that another family gifted to us. I put it on the green one evening for everybody to use, and by the next morning it had been vandalised – bent in half, ripped to pieces, and the net shredded.
The children’s play-park is being replaced.
The new playpark will be filled with activities for much younger children, and will have surveillance cameras fitted.
Where was I going with this? Oh yes – the thing that happened on the green.
The evening before last, a community charity arrived and transformed a corner of the green – with hot food, free tea, coffee, and cakes, the local radio station broadcasting live, and the local housing association staff and police on-hand to answer questions.
I thought it was a wonderful idea, and wandered out as soon as work allowed to take a look. I quickly realised that only perhaps one in ten of the local families had turned out to support the event – and wondered why. A conversation with one of the organisers answered it; they had only posted about the gathering within a private Facebook group – on purpose.
I wonder if they realise how few people use Facebook any more? We’ve all grown tired of the AI slop, the marketers, and the elderly right wing lunatic keyboard warriors taking advantage of the algorithmic timeline to spread hate, fear and bigotry.
I nursed a free coffee, and caught up with a few neighbours I hadn’t seen for a while – the usual suspects that turn up for anything and everything. I introduced some of them to our new neighbours, and spent a while listening to one of them bending the ear of a friend that sits on the town council.
I felt sorry for her – listening attentively to an endless stream of complaints about anything and everything. I would have been tempted to ask people what they might do to help, rather than just let them endlessly complain.
It seems many people of a certain age enjoy complaining. They have no ideas to volunteer. No solutions. Just a catalogue of percieved failures they will recount at length if given the chance.
The local residents are probably relieved that there has been no sign of the teenagers for the last several weeks – mostly I suspect because autumn arrived. Even our cats are spending their evenings curled up in the warm, rather than in search of their next victim in the back garden.
I can speak with some authority on what young people get up to when its cold and wet outside – because I have three under my roof. TikTok. Instagram. Snapchat. That’s pretty much it – endlessly scrolling.
I asked my middle daughter to pick her dirty washing up the other day (she was scrolling her phone). Several hours later, I reminded her (she was still scrolling her phone).
The next day the cat peed on her washing.
Cats are brutal, but effective.
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