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p12
Just recently we had an attempted burglary. Either that or an opportunist
ad hoc slice of desultory criminal damage. Suffice it to say that in the early hours the
main front
window was smashed to smithereens by a large heavy instrument and I stumbled downstairs
next morning to find a force nine gale whipping through the house.
It was a small but blessed miracle that half the neighbourhood hadn’t climbed in to
avail themselves of the few pieces of workable high tech equipment I possess. But they
probably couldn’t be arsed. So imbued am I with the Stokey ‘sod it’
mentality that, though I vaguely recall hearing the ear-splitting sound of smashing glass
and high decibel f-ing and blinding, I yawned, turned over and marked it down to the usual
nocturnal jolly japes.
Next day the folks next door shuffled awkwardly and refused to meet my gaze, sheepishly
admitting that they too had blearily thought ‘Oh well, there goes another bit of the
neighbourhood.’ The nightly ‘smash, grab and leg it’ events which would
bring the entire population of Stoke Poges onto the streets in their jim jams are but the
mere hooting of owls in N16. The local glazier duly arrived in a large gleaming Mercedes
to price the damage, saying I should write to Diane Abbott demanding reinstatement of the
birch. I sat with a rictus smile, nodding like a toy dog in the back of a car at the kind
of diatribe which made Norman Tebbit sound like a Big Girl’s Blouse, only avoiding
the eulogy on ‘if Ronnie and Reggie were still running things...’ by
disappearing upstairs.
I then rang the cop shop to get an insurance claim number, not out of any misplaced
fantasy about forensic teams and a new frock for Crimewatch. PCs Cynical and Over-
Brylcreemed arrived, swiftly clocked that I wasn’t a crackhead, and proceeded to tell
me I must be off my chump to live in Stokey and that they all galloped back to leafy Essex
at the end of a gruelling shift. OK I thought smugly ‘Yeh...borrrring’ but I did
get to ruminating on what’s the precise effect of living amongst this daily
undercurrent of lawlessness and simmering mayhem? I for one have never walked Stokey High
Street without the accompaniment of wailing sirens and squad cars doing 60 miles an hour.
I was actually shocked to hear of a recent stabbing at a Stokey school. God knows why. The
person telling me thought I was being prissy. Can the human brain take this on a long term
basis without being shredded to confetti or having sensibilities hammered and inured to
chaos and distress? Loonies roam the streets bellowing paranoid bollox, used syringes
litter alleyways, cars screech round bellowing out Rap, and that’s just from Le Petit
Coin to the Vortex, and we blithely saunter through it believing we’re oblivious with
our dentures doing a St Vitus Dance in our heads.
Maybe my daughter and I could be murdered in our beds, the air thick with blood-curdling
screams and thudding axe blows while the neighbours meander out next morning viewing the
blood spattered windows to mutter ‘oh dear’. In my street nobody gives a
monkey’s about Neighbourhood Watch. They couldn’t even get a quorum up for an
inaugural meeting. We in Stokey pay a big price for this compulsive urge to be amongst
People Like Us and live life on the so called Cutting Edge. I’m seriously beginning
to worry that the next edge could be my throat. I recently stayed with mates in Brighton,
hardly Sleepy Hollow, surrounded by their friends who were most definitely People
Like Me. The only difference to Stokey being the disconcerting lack of non-stop Anarchy In
The UK. Christ, I sound like bloody Anne Widdicombe. Now, about that birch...
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