Hi,
As a child 65 years ago every family around us was living in dire poverty; my parents never locked our door and during daylight the door was usually left open as my chums and I whizzed in and out; burglars would need to bring us something worth taking because we had so little; people smiled though and neighbours helped each other;
Fast forward 65 years and now greed and selfishness rules; the more money people have the more they want and the more they get the more miserable they become. Got a grievance the answer is now to buy an arsenal of weapons and create mass murder; no longer a ticking off from a local bobby its now an instant fine. It used to be give and take now its mostly take. How many modern kids have hobbies?
A couple of years ago Bron caught two low life breaking into our garden shed; these two hurled verbal abuse at Bron as they fled up the garden; swearing is normal these days for these low life who must have a parent who needs watering rather than feeding.
A few days later four youths were running riot in the garden adjacent to ours which was for sale; they were having a whale of a time; Bron came down to the workshop to inform me and I shot up into the garden; I leaned through the tall conifer hedge over a picket fence and caught one of the youths by his ankle as he straddled the 6' tall wrought iron gate; I told him to come over and was greeted with loud swearing in effect telling me to let him go; by now one of his chums was trying to kick me in the face through the gate; I said either come over or end up with a broken leg; unfortunately the picket fence was stabbing me in the chest with the conifers poking me and the repeated kicking attempts forced me to let go; as the four ran away they hurled more foul language at me; I simply replied I had seen all four so they could now sit back and await the police to visit them.
At the time I was 68 and I might be considered mad taking on four youths but Bron and I have put our life and soul into making this bungalow and grounds our home and no way am I prepared to let anyone trash it.
I then opened a chatline with the police explaining what had occurred and I was given a file number also a police officer would visit us. Half an hour later whilst discussing this with Bron in our front room the four youths suddenly appeared on the decking to the bungalow front; I'm always very quite and polite but as I pulled our front door open I thought the first two are going straight over the decking fence into our front garden; what a total and unexpected surprise though; immediately the first youth said they had come to apologize for their bad behaviour; Bron and I invited the four in to our front room and when they were seated I explained the effect their behaviour had on us and on our neighbour next door I went on to say that the biggest youth I had by the ankle was extremely lucky he didn't suffer a broken leg; all four were most apologetic and we were given promises they would never ever do such a thing again shaking hands on it; I then took all four round to our neighbour a retired lady living alone and in turn they also apologized to her; back home I contacted the police again and explained what had occurred and cancelled the police call out; the policeman asked if I would consider joining the Specials?
The four youths were simply bored out of their heads not meaning any serious harm or trouble their actions impacted badly on us and our neighbour. Bron and I learned a lot from this episode in that no real harm had been done but more importantly the four youths having apologized suddenly grew up and without a police record to their name; something good came of it.
I was brought up in the pit working underground in a deep coal mine at 15 years of age so I'm used to hard knocks and nothing frightens me; I'll do my best to avoid trouble or confrontation but I won't run away when confronted. The world is now mostly a nasty place to live in and its the people causing the trouble.
I've rambled on enough and time I wandered up the garden to dig up more roots.
Kind regards, Colin.