Fond as I am of sausages and fireworks, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of bonfire night. I’ve never been mad about Hallowe’en, either, but the children are keen thanks to a combination of chocolate manufacturers’ marketing and a love of dressing up.
When we lived in the bleaker reaches of the East End of London, Hallowe’en was an endless procession of hoodied adolescents coming to the door. Unappealing as they were, they were always polite, possibly because I used to answer the door with a baseball bat in one hand. Anyway, there was never any trouble. They’d remove their hideous masks, smile, mumble their thanks and shuffle off.
Fast forward a couple of years to last Monday, in the more salubrious environs of Primrose Hill, northwest London. It’s a beautiful, crisp night. There are carved pumpkins glowing from window ledges; the residents have stocked up on “candy” and veritable armies of small children are doing the rounds.
It’s all very sweet. Little girls dressed up as fairies, endless small Harry Potters, babies in pumpkin outfits, their grinning parents standing behind them. My children, looking gruesome, go off with their posse and gather armfuls of treats. My sister-in-law, who was manning the door for most of the time, reckons we had about 200 callers between 6pm and 9pm.
Having been a bit of a grump about the whole thing, I was standing in the kitchen changing my mind and feeling very benign about all the adorable, excited children. My boyfriend and I decided to go to the pub to have a Hallowe’en drink. We’d barely sat down before a gang of teenagers, all masked, came rampaging in. Since nobody goes to the pub with their pockets bulging with sweets they were (aggressively) after money. They got a little, then left.
The nice atmosphere in the pub changed slightly. We looked out of the window and noticed all the cars parked in the street were being pelted with eggs and flour. At this point, not liking what was going on and mindful my sister-in-law was alone in the house with the children and a handful of their friends, we went home.
On the way we passed the same gang, who were knocking on a door. A man opened it, smiling, proffering a bowl of sweets. The children shoved past him — pushing him back into his hallway — jeering and swearing. With some difficulty he managed to get rid of them and shut the door. He was rewarded for his pains by more jeering, whooping and the sound of broken glass.
We walked faster and got home to find my sister-in-law incandescent. The same teenagers had knocked on our door when she’d been putting the baby to bed, so my 13-year-old son had answered, smiling and offering doughnuts and the last of the sweets. The trick-or-treaters had grabbed handfuls and thrown them down our hall. Mercifully — and it’s a sad thing to be merciful for — my son has quite a mouth on him when pushed, so he used language that was forceful enough to make them leave.
I hate to think what would have happened if he’d been shy or a little girl. Then the gang went two doors down. When the woman there opened the door they said: “Give us some f****** money, bitch,” before cramming into her hall. She was at home alone with a baby.
At this point my heroic sister-in-law came out of the house and gave the gang the most comprehensive bollocking, ending her tirade with the crushing “Go home, silly little boys”. Silly maybe, but at about 6ft they were hardly little and old enough to carry a knife. Two bobbies appeared the next day patrolling the streets. Where were they on Hallowe’en? Opening the door to strangers is an act of faith. Opening the door to strangers and giving them treats is so kind-hearted it seems foolhardy. That such kindness and generosity should result in feeling threatened in one’s home makes me almost insane with fury.
In my youth I would have felt flooding waves of compassion for these awful children. Last week, as I explained to my children that people who have horrible lives sometimes can’t help being horrible themselves and that we should feel sorry for the yobs, rather than cross, I realised I didn’t believe a word of it. I wished I still had my baseball bat because I’d have used it.
The truth of the matter is I don’t care how terrible these children’s lives might be. I don’t care how deprived they are, how poor, shouted at, working class; how crushed, chippy or black (the most depressing thing of all is that all the door-rammers were black). I don’t care.
I know people who could tick all of the above boxes who are lovely, humbling human beings. These weren’t. They were trash. To call them anything else is sentimental claptrap. And while I can still summon up a smidgen of compassion, what I mostly feel is anger at the idea we live in a society where occurrences such as these are commonplace, and where nothing seems to happen to help those who need help. No, not the ghastly children, who have food, education and expensive designer clothes.
I mean us, the weary recipients of their bad behaviour.
So: another ideological U-turn. They seem to be coming thick and fast as I hurtle towards my 40th birthday. Maybe it’s an age thing. Maybe we increasingly live in a society that’s so intent on rewarding “victimhood”, so keen on righting “injustice” that it can’t protect ordinary people sitting in their homes on a beautiful October night.
- Great fuss about five-year-olds being taught about what the Daily Mail likes to call “gay lifestyles”, as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority says primary schools need to cover a wider range of family relationships.
Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute said last week: “Parents will be up in arms.” Will they? Why? It is simply a fact of life that many children live in step-families or single-parent households, with grandparents, two mummies or with foster parents.
Do we really want these children to feel marginalised from the age of five by never seeing their lives represented in educational material? The notion that the only worthwhile family is a nuclear one is as antiquated as it is wrong-headed. People are either capable of love or they aren’t and that has nothing to do with their marital status, sexual orientation or biology.
The QCA’s proposals aren’t anything to do with undermining “traditional families”. They’re about making children feel secure and “normal”.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt through having a child with special needs, it is not to judge other people in a similar boat
