Let's Blame Everyone Else
Spring has sprung and that felt like real sunshine today…you know, the kind that actually warms the side of your face. It was time for me to get back on track with my Five Hundred Mile Diet. I announced to my incredulous family that I would brave the great outdoors and actually walk to the video shop to return that new Bill Murray film we were daft enough to rent. I’ll gloss over how we spent much of the previous evening staring at the goggle-box and munching microwave popcorn. It just goes to show how easily you can slip back into those couch-potato habits when the weather turns a bit nippy.
So I put on my coat and gave the Zedettes a special hug. Looking into their wide-eyed teary faces made me decide, there and then, to impart an important family secret.
“Children,” I said, “just in case I don’t return…there’s something you ought to know…”
“What is it, Papa” they asked.
“Simply this, dearest ones…the chocolate biscuits are in that tin behind the baked beans.”
Then I was off, crunching through the broken glass and gazing at graffiti-covered walls as I set out on the two-mile round trip through the suburbs of Glasgow. This is not how I hoped things would be. I was expecting songbirds and daffodils. Yet, everywhere I turn these days I see desecration, defacement and destruction. No daffodils at all. They’ve probably been yanked out by the yobs and that’s got to hurt.
Now it’s not as if I live in an area of urban deprivation. No, we’re talking about one of those terribly nice middle-class neighbourhoods where local residents go into a panic if the baker runs low on croissants. And if you manage to catch a glimpse of the yobs and vandals it’s difficult to believe that poverty is at the root of their problems. Most of them are wearing the latest branded sports clothes and communicating with each other via the kind of hi-tech mobile phones that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Star Trek. Designer Delinquents, I call them. It has a ring to it. Or ring tone, even.
So, how did things get this way? What happened to the good ol’ days when, if you saw a neighbour’s child drop a piece of litter, you were fully within your rights to deal with the situation by organising a horse-whipping? Community spirit, we called it. Has it gone completely?
Heck, no. Month after month I travel around Scotland and hear about the groups and individuals trying to make a difference. Some of them organise fund-raising events as part of our Let’s Do the Show Right Here series, others pursue more serious campaigns and feature in our Action Scotland programme. I remember schoolchildren in Dalmellingtion taking part in a big clean-up project and teenagers in Stonehaven involved in a midnight dip to help save the outdoor swimming pool.
But maybe we all need to do more. As I continued my walk today I passed a local primary school and saw a bitter little note tied to the gate. Apparently a quiz night organised by the PTA had been cancelled “due to lack of support”. It made me think. Perhaps if we all spent less time on couches, watching duff DVDs we might be able to do a little more for the community.
Now that would be a breath of fresh air.
