One Brick at a Time

I’m not generally one to employ bad language, except when, you know, I want to, but sometimes the only word that fits is the one you can’t say in front of your parents.

I live in York. It’s a beautiful city, and I’m lucky enough to live in a particularly nice part of it. The only time I don’t actively relish living here, though, is on race day. York has a quite famous racecourse, and my house lies firmly on the route from racecourse to town centre, which means that every drunken yob that attends the race meeting is pretty much guaranteed to pass behind my house.

Oh, to be sure, there are some very respectable people that go to York races. I think they must get taxis into town, though. In general (and it is in general), the type of person that walks past on his way from pub to pub, having squandered his hard-earned dole money on the gee-gees, is the sort of person that thinks that wearing a short-sleeved shirt constitutes “dressing up for the races”. That, or the suit that is only ever otherwise seen by magistrates.

There is a small alley that leads from this migratory path, alongside my cluster of houses, and it is generally this alley that these ridiculously out-of-control twats use to piss in (about 30 feet from the local primary school). It’s not completely out of character for them to do it in a group, or for one to decide that pissing isn’t quite enough, and are there any dock leaves handy?

So, this weekend the local council arranged for a row of 5 portaloos to be installed temporarily. Oh, the hilarity when these got knocked over (every 5 fucking minutes), the laughter and the joy from the idiots that believe it’s ok to force a temporary building to the ground just because they can. And oh! How much more fun when there’s someone actually inside one. I mean, what a bunch of cunts.

Don’t get me wrong – statistically-speaking, the person inside is also likely to be a Gareth Hunt, but just put yourself in their place. You’re so desperate for a wee (or more) that you subject yourself to the indignity of using a portaloo that is situated on the flight path of the common-or-garden-twat. You settle yourself down inside a room so small that your stomach could touch the door if you breathed in too deeply, and you arrange your feet so that your trousers – once lowered – don’t trail in too much of someone else’s urine or vomit. You then find yourself falling backwards as the whole building falls over, piss, shit and vomit swirling around your feet, and then your back and arms. Twats.

But now for the cunt de resistance…

We overlook my daughter’s school and playground. It is easily the best primary school in York and arguably one of the best in the country. On Thursday, a 5-year-old from my daughter’s class was almost abducted. It was after school, and most of her friends were in the playground. Her mother was there, too, sitting on the bench, breastfeeding her baby. MDF (my daughter’s friend) needed to go to the toilet, and like 5-yr-olds everywhere, she couldn’t wait until she got home, so her mother (like parents of 5-yr-olds everywhere) told her to go behind a tree. The tree in question was maybe 150yards away, and she was within sight of her mother at all times.

A man approached her, and said that if she went with him, he’d give her a motorbike. First of all, cunt. Secondly, a motorbike? Jesus! Know your target audience, cunt! That might work on a lad, but what a stupid lure for a 5-yr-old girl! So, he was evidently not a particularly bright cunt, but a cunt nonetheless.

MDF played her part brilliantly. She didn’t say anything to the man, but ran straight back to her mother and told her everything. She even gave (for a 5-yr-old) a pretty good description to the police. We’re told they took someone in for questioning the following day, but we’ve no news other than that.

This girl could have been murdered. Worse, she could have been abused before she was murdered. If that sounds like an exaggeration, think about what the man wanted, why he attempted to lure this girl away from her mother and friends in broad daylight. I’m pretty damn certain a motorbike wasn’t really in the offing.

So now everyone is on red alert. Parents are being extra vigilant, and children are being reminded about stranger danger. There has been a bigger police presence near the school (two men, caught videoing the school, ran away when approached by police), and everyone is more aware of the danger that cunts like this pose to unsuspecting children, who would never in their lives get over the ordeal these scumbags would put them through – if they lived through it, that is.

On a smaller scale, innocence is being eroded across the board, and children are being molly-coddled even more. My own daughter, who usually gets collected by a friend and taken to the playground, is now being brought home straight after school, as the friend has her two children to look after, and – understandably – does not want the added risk and responsibility of looking after someone else’s child for half and hour when she is now having to watch her own children even more closely than she was before. I’d probably do the same, in her shoes.

It’s difficult to know what I would do if I managed to accost someone who was behaving in a suspicious manner outside the school, or who started talking to a child near the school – near my home! It’s sad, because every man becomes a suspect. I love kids, and my natural inclination when out and about, is to smile at a child my daughter’s age, if they’re with their parents. I now hold myself in check. My own innocence has also been lost, and I suspect it is the same for other men, everywhere. We can’t give smiles any more. And children can’t receive them.