Bangers & Monster Mash

Great fun has been had by all in Gaunts Way, Letchworth over the last week or so. The usual sweep of giggling children knocking at our door, politely asking for sweets with perhaps the merest hint that they may otherwise do something rather funny with some toilet-roll on one’s car aerial. Smaller children also visit our house, some of their parents obviously having been to the sale at the Rocky Horror props department. All good humoured, traditional fayre you might say, and I’ll agree.

However, it’s what happens when the 9pm watershed is passed, when more sinister elements come out to play that I speak of today.

Teenagers, some barely, roam the street – intent perhaps upon having some fun of their own - triggering the metaphorical tripwire of wrath of some of our older residents when they dare to shout or laugh too loudly. I’m not one of those parents who has forgotten what it is to be a teenager, but I am a parent of two smallish-fry, and married also.

So, having given all the goodies away, and keeping only one small bar for medicinal purposes, I left the house for some sport of my own - badminton.

Only ninety minutes later – not even long enough for Arsenal to score an equaliser – my wife was ringing my mobile phone pleading with me to come home again to deal with the local funsters who had pelted her, and our neighbours cars and house with eggs, lit a firework and pointed it up his drive at his car, verbally abused other neighbours and had then sat in the dark on the ‘Rec’ whilst harassed-looking PCSOs chased around with two cars looking for them. A couple of friendly teenagers, thankfully more responsible than the perpetrators, informed me that the trouble had originated from a local youth who lives only ten doors down from me, with a few of his future cellmates to back him up.

As luck would have it, whilst I was enjoying a day off on the Wednesday, the lad happened to saunter past the end of my drive. Perfect opportunity to parley with him. So I called out to him, and asked him whether he had been involved. Quickly popping a handy Babel Fish into my ear, I realised he was speaking English, but sporadically interspersing recognisable words with the four-fettered variety. I gather he was intimating that he wasn’t in, it wasn’t him, he’d been out with friends, and further representations to the otherwise should be made through his Dad.

I had no proof so, as he suggested, I prepared to enter the local soil-turning competition finals.

His father collared me – literally – on the following Saturday night. Offered me outside to deal with the problem there and then. I politely made my excuses, as he was obviously somewhat the worse for drink, removed his rather flaccid grip from my overcoat, and rejoined the family fireworks night.

So whilst our local politicians battle with the rights and wrongs of a fireworks licensing bill, curfews for rude teenagers, or the question of underage drinking in the town, I would humbly opine that many problems begin at the home, and that all neighbours should always try to talk to each other, discuss, work as a force instead of an individual, and stamp out problems at source rather than resorting to police callouts all night. Strident disapproval from peers always worked in the playground, and in the office, so why don’t we all give it a try in our neighbourhoods.