The other day when walking through a public park area in Atherton, I was confronted by a group of teenagers who thought it was amusing to verbally attack me with a more foul mouthed rant than I ever would have expected from a child. Particularly a child that probably should have been in school at the time. I didn’t even respond, mainly from fear of being, well I don’t really know, but of something bad happening. Is it this kind of action that is letting the lunatics run the asylum? Sad answer is probably; yes.
When I was a kid the whole neighbourhood used to ‘parent’ me. My social ethos was based on the welfare of an entire community, meaning that if I did anything wrong; which I did many times, someone on my street or beyond would either tell me off, clout me, or tell my parents. If I wandered back to my dad complaining that a neighbour had clouted me his response would be ‘What for?’, I’d answer him, then probably recieve another clout for whatever it was anyway. This was all part of retaining a healthy sense of community, if I got away with something, someone else would do it, then someone else and it would make the particular action seem, to others, to be an acceptable thing to do.
It was that part of growing up that gave me a respect for people in general, rather than just people in my family... A clout may seem harsh, but it didn’t kill me, and was all in aide of a ‘common good’. I’m not condoning hitting your children, or encouraging you to hit other peoples children; but a clout round the head never did me any harm, and the real worry is, that people are even too afraid to speak up for themselves now, no matter how they are treated or spoken to.
The teenagers, and some even younger, are running amok these days. Discipline is hard to enforce if you don’t even know where your own child is most of the time. I’m not judging anyone, they probably don’t want you to know where they are because they don’t want you to know what they’re doing. People are generally afraid to say ‘hello’ to a child now for fear of being branded a paedophile. It’s a very sad state of affairs.
Noone has that sense of community anymore... It never used to matter that the person pulling you up on something wasn’t your mums best friend, or a relative. Now we are told to mind our own business. Well actually; it is my business! I live here; we all have to live here and if we don’t all play together, nicely, then what do we have left? Nothing is what... A crap town to live in, and people who are basically too scared to leave their house for the fear of some local chav lobbing empty cider bottles at them.
I’ve just been told by a friend of mine who, after playing a gig in Manchester and driving home to Leigh, saw a man being beaten in the middle of the road. I asked him if he helped and he said he didn’t... For fear of the same thing happening to him. No-one can judge a person for that action; it’s just very, very sad that our communities have come to that. His suggestion was moving to a ranch in Tenessee, he also said I could come; and bring my horse!
Not quite sure I’m ready to give up on human nature and our little towns quite yet though... But, what can we do about it? There must be something more to life than this...
ALEX FIX IT!
