I passed through the children’s playground. From where I live it’s a pedestrian shortcut into town. Two boys were there, who looked about 8, one with a bandanna tied around his face, like a masked bandit holding up a Wells Fargo coach. At his age I must have done the same. They asked me for 50p. “No,” I said firmly and carried on walking, past the playground, down the street. Behind me were persistent muffled curses and foul language. The boys must be following me.
It’s disturbing that children so young should speak thus, but never mind. They merely pick up the language they hear around them. There is nothing to be done about it. I walked through a parking lot. It’s a short cut to the bank, doctor’s surgery and Royal Mail post box. A voice, now louder, said unmistakably “It’s you we’re talking to, you $#%*!!” So I turned round and there they were, looking mighty fierce.
“I suppose you think you’re—pirates?” I said, as one who addresses children at play. “No, we’re gangsters. And if you don’t hand over some money, we’ll kick your car in.” said the masked boy.
I’d meant to say gangsters, not pirates, but couldn’t think of the word straight away. I’ve been rereading The Coral Island, by RM Ballantyne. I found an old copy and decided to give it to my grandson. I suppose I was 8 or 9 when I read it first, and much preferred it to Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. Ralph Rover is shipwrecked with his two young companions, and is later captured by pirates, rough violent men whose speech is peppered with foul oaths.
It seemed to be just one of the boys who who fancied himself as a gangster. The other tagged along like a reluctant sidekick, a younger brother perhaps. As nasty as they tried to sound, they were too small to take seriously. My unease was not for my own safety but for the future’s, when they’ve honed their skills and grown up.
I pointed to a nearby parked car. “That’s mine. Go on, kick it in.” They fell back, unsure what to do next. Now I had a momentary advantage, and said, “Go away now. I’ve had enough of you.” Any more contact would merely help train them in future thuggery.
It was unnerving. Do I look like a feeble pensioner who can be mugged with impunity by young cubs? Can I feel safe in my own neighbourhood? I’ve never thought this before, despite occasional raving drunks and junkies, some of whom infest that very playground after dark, just the other side of my backyard fence. I’ve always seen them as harmless co-dwellers of a crowded cosmopolitan district. We give one another space. It’s a British thing.
But I’ve been feeling disordered lately, and it’s been building up like a boil ready to erupt. Something was out of tune on every level. For example I went to the revamped and resited local library. My rage at its crimes against culture were rekindled. There was poison in me. Only action could lance the boil. I could understand what turns devout youths into terrorists. It’s probably an unconscious outrage at one’s own reflection—thus a self-magnifying disorder. I wanted that library destroyed, as if I were an OT prophet despairing of the state of Israel.
Recognizing my own sense of exile & outlawdom, I can only dwell at peace in society by recognize I’m brother to all, and close cousin to the slugs, magpies, spiders, the ownerless black cat and the occasional rat that runs along the fence-top, whiskers a-twitch, drawn to the aroma of my new compost-bin. (These are some of the unbidden visitors to my backyard.) Ariadne’s thread, the thing to cling to that leads me to safety, must be and all-connecting love. I don’t know how but I forgot it, and strayed, and wondered why I couldn’t write anything worthwhile
One imagines that “angels in disguise” are kind strangers, but that’s just in fairy-tales. You cannot tell the courier by his clothing. What counts is the message. Sometimes it’s “Don’t give up hope. Know that your problems can be solved at a stroke.” Other times he may bring you a tableau, or hold up a mirror, like those little cursing bandits, shocking me out of acting the curmudgeon, back to who I really am, which is the only place to be.
a wayfarer’s notes 
My sympathies, Vincent. What if you had agreed to give him 50 p if he showed you where he lived, took you to the door and showed you his mother, and you then sent social workers around to help? If you feel you have to blame UK society for the poison in it, perhaps you have to blame the strikebreaker mill owners of the 1950s for flying in the first planeloads of Pakistanis to break the backs of the local workers. Was that just, to begin to break down traditional English/British society in that way? Is this young boy rootless in a foreign country, robbed of growing up in his own culture and hating you white Britishers for it, though he may not even understand why he hates you and turns to thuggery? It must be a terribly disconcerting experience to walk out the door feeling you are a part of the All, only to creep home locked inside yourself once more — your dignity assaulted by a child of a culture you cannot even know. Lost in your own country. Both of you.
LikeLike
Dear Anonymous, thanks for making it clear that my original post could have been construed as a critique of immigration and a discomfort with the resulting cultural mix.
I understand your position on these points but I don't share that view at all.
I have chosen to live in a district rich with different skin colours, cultures and allegiances. It's my home and theirs.
It was difficult in this piece to get my point across, and I see I have distracted it with references to irrelevant details.
So please excuse me for having amended the piece to remove possible causes of misunderstanding. I was trying to describe the resolution of a personal spiritual crisis.
Normally I'm glad when someone interprets my writing in a way that's especially meaningful to them. But in all innocence, I hadn't thought it could be used to support the agenda you hint at in your comment.
I realize that by making some unimportant alterations to my post I have made your comment seem mystifying to others, and apologize for that.
LikeLike
@anonymous: what if we all believed our own misgivings were the fault of something else? if only there were someone open-minded enough to save us from our own transgressions? whether a child, adult, or mixture of both… we are responsible for our own reactions to life, not the other way around.
@vincent: you have my sympathies, but not the veiled kind of the previous “anonymous” commenter. that little boy is ultimately the product of industrialism buried into a human heart… to seek “gain” in the easiest manner, by whatever means possible. it is painful to see, because (I am assuming you feel the same) we see a reflection of ourselves in that little boy and hate what it has become. you're not wrong to stick their noses in their allegorical piles of excrement… how else will they learn what they do is to be corrected, not encouraged? there may be a word for how such encounters (very much present in our sister culture across the pond) make me feel, but I can't think of it… a sad kind of anger-filled desire to do something, anything that might shift a culture that grows these bandits in angels' disguises.
LikeLike
i just like the walk as i normally do…
LikeLike
Tim, I was the on the point of pulling the post – or put it back into the draft pile at any rate – till I saw your comment which lifted my day, bless you.
You are so right that I saw the reflection of myself in that boy and that scared me. As if the negative vibes of my disorderedness would make dogs bite me and loose tiles fall from roofs on my head. I didn't want to write about such a feeling!
LikeLike
Ah Scot, that's an enviable ability to enjoy. Bless you for it.
LikeLike
I'm just pleased that you are writing and describing your surroundings again, I love it when you describe the places you walk through, bringing it alive fr those of us who can only imagine both the countryside and the industrial areas around you.
I also think you are to be commended for your willingness to stand up to these young boys without being vicious to them as so many are then wonder why they turn out so bad. (I'm not sure if I am making sense although I know what I mean)
LikeLike
But this needs no explanation – the piece itself is that. I have been feeling similarly lost among the people population – try as I might, I do not understand the human race. Perhaps we are all lost, wandering around in each other's countries. Can Ariadne’s thread ever break, do you think?
It is good that we see ourselves in others, even better when we recognize that's who we're looking at. I will have to practice remembering that…
LikeLike
we are all strangers to each other, from time to time. impulses and emotions are so complex, and often so contradictory – how could we not be?
let me add my applause for how you handled the situation, firmly and without malice. As real adults should and so seldom do.
LikeLike
Ah, but Hayden, and Lady in Red too, I have been reflecting about this business of giving the coin to these mischievous young beggars.
Had I been in a different mood, I might perhaps have given it to them, freely and unconditionally, and the effect would have been better for the planet. But I wasn't ready, didn't have what it took. Of which more perhaps in another post.
LikeLike
And Lady, when you write “I'm just pleased that you are writing and describing your surroundings again, I love it when you describe the places you walk through, bringing it alive for those of us who can only imagine both the countryside and the industrial areas around you”—you inspire me to dedicate to you an entire post.
LikeLike
No Pauline, Ariadne's thread can never break. It was there before us, it will be there when we are long gone.
It's what holds this universe together.
This astonishing universe which purges itself each night of the evil of each day, as a seashore purges itself with the self-cleansing tide, has a strength and self-correction that we can only approach with awe.
LikeLike
Wow, this is the kind of stuff I've only seen in movies – mobs of mean little kids holding up unsuspecting passers-by. I've always heard to watch out for them when visiting foreign countries, but I am sure it happens a lot here, too.
I think you reacted well to the situation, for it sounds like you kept your composure, at least externally. Well done. 🙂
LikeLike
Horrible experience, but why do you see yourself in the little boy who called you a dirty name? Why would you blame yourself?
LikeLike
I've read the original post again, after reading all of the comments, and you seem to have altered your original post to gloss over an immigration reference.
A quote from Hemingway. “Let those who want to save the world, if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly.”
I think he meant you are not responsible for your reality. But if you want to write, you have to tell the whole truth about your corner. However painful reality is, disguising it is misleading.
We all belong to cultures, and fractured cultures, and cultures within cultures. We can be religious or secular, sensualist and egotist or intellectual and priestly, learned or led, and maybe all of them at one time or other. Cultures are always in conflict and we are caught in those conflicts if we belong to a culture ('respect your elders; no profanity in public') and wish to defend it. The priest fights the sinner and the sinner fights the priest. It’s our tangled reality.
You’re not alone. Many of your neighbours from all the different ethnic cultures there will know the shock you feel and will share it. Others will not. Still, you’re not alone. You just have to know what you want to defend. Others will defend it with you, I'm sure.
Best wishes.
LikeLike
Anton I altered it to try and avoid distracting interpretations: one of which was somewhat racist.
It is still subject to misinterpretation and that's my fault for not taking enough care.
When I said “outrage at my own reflection” I didn't mean that I saw myself in the little boy. What I saw was a reflection of my own disordered prejudice and snobbery which must have emanated a kind of low-grade hate. Just as the smell of rotting meat attracts flies, so this thing in me attracted baby muggers. Perhaps there's a mechanism of cause and effect at work. Or perhaps the boys were angelic messengers holding up the mirror to my own negativity and its consequences.
So I don't see it as a “horrible experience”—more a redemptive one which I needed.
LikeLike