A girl thing

A couple of years ago I had almost reached my front door after returning from work when I heard something that stopped me in my tracks. I was outside a neighbouring house and I could hear loud, continuous sobbing and weeping. It sounded as though a woman was in great distress.

I really did not feel like sorting out anyone’s problems at the time, I was tired and fed up, but this was days after the discovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped as a young girl and held for 18 years. I decided that I did not want to be one of those people who noticed something and did not act on it. So I dumped my bag just inside my front door with an explanation to my partner, walked back and listened again. The sound was still coming from a first floor window. I rang the bell and explained myself to the man who answered the door. “I suppose you want to see them for yourself?” he said before turning and calling to someone upstairs. Two teenage girls appeared who seemed perfectly happy. So I left. A week later the same thing happened but I ignored it. I’ve seen both girls since then and I still have no idea what was going on.

At the time I was already aware that the suburb I live in was home to a number of brothels, with convenient transport links. The ads in the back of the local paper testify to it and I suppose that most of us regard it as a fact of life. What the majority of people who glance at those ads do not know is that apart from the women who engage willingly in prostitution there are now many who have been forced into it. Women desperate to earn money and gain independence are brought to the UK by traffickers, discovering too late that the men who promised them a great job and a new life are actually selling them into the worst situation imaginable. Even if they are rescued they are cut off from their old life forever, knowing that other young girls from their home town are being targeted by the same traffickers.



The cases of Elizabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch are bound to chill the blood of anyone who thought that women in the West were no longer vulnerable to this kind of ill-treatment. There has been much speculation, particularly in Austria where these incidents occurred, that the men who held them captive were fossils, throwbacks to an earlier time when women were expected to do as they were told. Others suggest that these cases are symptomatic of an underlying desire to keep women in their place.

It is tempting to think that, one hundred years after the first International Women’s Day, the repression of women is restricted to countries where it is part of a cultural tradition. The truth is that all around us women suffer in silence, treating the bruises they get from an angry partner as part of the deal. It was revealed recently that it is common for there to be an increase in the rate of domestic violence after football matches involving Rangers and Celtic, in fact they doubled after one game.

At the same time I have noticed the capacity for violence is no longer restricted to men, if it ever was. There was a time when it was taken as read that a young teenage girl who caused trouble was a fluke and likely to come from a challenging background. How things have changed. Last year a young women was convicted of manslaughter, having stamped on and kicked a man who later died. She was seventeen years old at the time, her fashionable ballet pumps and handbag covered in her victim’s blood. So much for an expensive education and a comfortable home. I see Ruby Thomas in many of the teenage girls I now encounter, the smart back chat that some see as confidence as likely to be a first step in a potentially violent encounter. I never underestimate the dangerousness of girls in school uniform.

Almost thirty years ago, when I was still at school, a fellow students was told by one teacher that she was not welcome to study technical drawing in his class as he did not feel that a career in engineering was suitable for a woman. Even then this comment made jaws drop amongst students and staff who took it for granted that a woman could have any career she wanted. By then women had begun to take control of reproduction using the Pill and, especially with the advent of AIDS/HIV, by insisting on the use of condoms. That made it easier for them to delay having children until they wanted too but it has become clear that some have delayed too long and it has now reached the stage where women are being warned not to wait until their forties to get pregnant.

The influx of Eastern Europeans, largely Poles in my area, has shown up this element in the change of women’s fortunes. I don’t suppose that many of the young women who moved here several years ago planned to stay more than a few years but have in fact settled down and had babies. They stood out, often slimmer and healthier than their British counterparts and now that they are mothers they are unusual again in that the fathers of their children are in evidence and even live with them as part of a family unit. In my street it had reached the stage where there were barely any young children living in the surrounding houses. One morning I found that I had spent several minutes standing by the bathroom window transfixed by something unusual - the sound of a baby crying, coming from a neighbouring house.

The impression I get is that in my area British couples wait until they can get a mortgage before they begin having children whereas other nationalities are quite happy to raise their families in rented accommodation. These newcomers have at times seemed to have old fashioned values that were once common in the UK and the women in that group don’t seem to regard motherhood as restrictive. Personally I don’t believe women can have it all. I think you can be a good mother and hold down a job once the children are at school but I now find it difficult to accept the idea of a woman heading back to work leaving a very young child in someone else’s care. Perhaps I’m getting old and conservative.

Even so I was stunned when I heard about the impact that the notion that a male is worth more than a female has had on ante-natal care in the UK. Hospitals in areas where there is a large Asian population do not advise the expectant mothers in their care of the gender before the child is born as it can be a death sentence for a female foetus. It could lead to a “miscarriage”.

During my life I know that things have improved beyond recognition for so many women but it is hugely dispiriting to think that we are still being paid less because of our gender. In Portugal, a short flight away from the UK, women can still end up in prison if they have an abortion. In Guatemala it is almost commonplace for women to be murdered. In Afghanistan women continue to kill themselves in despair at forced marriages. In my own country women return to the homes where they are beaten and abused because they have no other choice.

I suppose you could argue that the fact that I was prepared to challenge someone over what I thought might be a case of domestic violence means that things aren’t as bad as they once were. People used to look the other way when I was a child because they felt that it wasn’t their business. Worse than that, the policeman who attended the incident might actually commiserate with the perpetrator. Today, the police officer who attends is as likely to be female but still capable of standing up to a man who thinks that pounding his wife after his team loses on a Saturday night is a form of leisure activity. Perhaps that is the biggest gain of all.

Fort Home, Suburbia

At first I laughed when I saw it. Someone had pinched some pampas grass from a nearby street and stuck the stems very neatly into the shared hedge that edges ours and the neighbour’s front gardens. It looked quite festive, a night time prank by some passing reveller. Then it was pointed out to me that to leave them there might invite more negative attention, suggesting that if we let this pass something less funny might follow. So I called on our neighbours to ask if they didn’t mind my removing them and was really surprised to find that they were concerned that the opposite might happen. They had left them there in case the person responsible retaliated.

This incident is typical of the kind that leave the average householder with what we are told is an exaggerated sense of threat. The statistics tell me that the crime rate in my area is at an average level compared to central London but the sight of an empty wallet abandoned in the street or broken glass on a pavement where someone has broken into a car remind me that someone suffers as a result of criminal activity every day within a few metres of my front door. It doesn’t matter how often the police remind drivers not leave anything, even cigarettes, on show in their vehicles or suggest that we keep credit cards zipped into our inside pockets. We still leave ourselves open to opportunists with no conscience. One hot summer evening I called at a house to point out that I could see a handbag, heavy with money, cards and keys from the pavement through a front door that had been left open to ventilate the house. Even a locked door is no deterrent to car thieves who use a hook on the end of a broom handle to steal car keys from stairs and tables in hallways. I was told of one incident where all three cars belonging to one household were stolen at once.

In my experience it is older people, often those who have been on the receiving end of this kind of attention, who are most switched on about crime. A former neighbour giggled as he showed me his latest ploy to ward off burglars, a recording of a barking dog that was triggered when I walked past his back door. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it actually sounded like a recording of a dog and I suspect he was as aware of it as I was but it was certainly more convincing than the man who began barking when I slipped a piece of misdirected mail through his letterbox.

These attempts at putting off baddies may sound absurd but at least they were aware of the threat. Many people have no idea that they regularly leave their home in a state that screams “Come and get me!“ to burglars. I am left open mouthed at the naivety of the householders in my area. The enclosed porches that were meant to prevent heat escaping through the front door are often left unlocked. It is common for the post to be pushed through the letterbox in the glazed porch door so that bank statements, tax returns and all manner of confidential paperwork sit there for hours until the householder returns from work. Even if the door is locked there is barely anyone around to take notice if the glass panel is kicked in.

Those bold enough to go that far might take the opportunity to tackle the main door and help themselves to something more substantial than the cash, credit cards and jewellery left in full view. A surprising number of householders leave a spare key under a plant pot or somewhere similar and burglars know this. They are some of the most accomplished people watchers, reading the message sent out by the festering milk bottles and soggy newspapers that collect on your doorstep during your summer holiday. They know that a confident manner will reassure those passing by and that the average person is reluctant to sort out someone else’s problem, leaving them to get on with it.

“Kick ins”, where a driver waits in a car outside a target house while an accomplice literally kicks in the front door and carries out valuables, are quite common in the suburbs. I know because we were targeted in this way a few years ago. I was in the middle of a nap on a weekday afternoon when someone rang the doorbell and used the knocker rather too vigorously on the door . I took this to be an impatient courier and as I got to the top of the stairs in time to see the front door fly open I actually thought that some fool had lobbed the parcel at it in haste, bursting it open. It was the brief sight of a man stepping in and then very quickly out of the hall that put me right. I got to the bottom of the stairs in time to see him duck behind what was then an untidy and rather high hedge and into a car which tore off at speed. Being half asleep didn’t help as I tried to work out what had just happened but the one other person I saw in the street didn’t seem to realise that anything was wrong. It turned out that ours was not the only home to be targeted by this pair of thieves on that day. Their movements were tracked for some time on CCTV using number plate recognition technology. I was lucky in that I was in and did not come face to face with someone who would use violence rather than get caught.

Since then we bother to double lock the front door during the day and use the bolts and chain once we are both in. The hedge is now kept at a height that allows us to see the car when we are downstairs - we‘ve already lost one to someone who needed spare parts for his own similar car (he was kind enough to dump what was left of it a few streets away). The lawn is also kept in a reasonable state as it seems that untidiness suggests a vulnerable occupant who won‘t fight back. The hedge that the owner is no longer able to trim themselves also provides a screen for anyone busy at the front door for the wrong reasons. It seems that the message sent out by a house proud homeowner is “I am prepared to defend my castle” whereas an unkempt lawn and hedge suggest the opposite.

Suburban homes are particularly vulnerable because they usually come with front and back gardens. If a boundary fence comes down it often stays down until the owner establishes who is responsible for it. The fact that a long section of fence can be owned in part by several people doesn’t help as it can mean that the various sections don’t match up and a gap becomes a highway for cats, foxes and thieves. It is usually the police officer chasing a suspect who tells us about the intruder in our back garden. Reluctantly I have come to the conclusion that the low fence that has been in place there since 1936 between ours and the adjoining semi will have to be replaced with something much taller. It’s a sad comment on our times. We will also be replacing the gate to the front garden that was removed long before we arrived to reinforce the psychological barrier between the street and the house.

Those who lived in my area when the mock Tudor semis were newly built will tell you that there was a time when you could go shopping leaving the front door unlocked. If that really was the case I suspect it had more to do with the fact that there was usually someone around to put off a thief than with the general level of honesty. That generation knew their neighbours, married women were often housewives and strangers stood out. Ours inhabits a world where you can live next to someone for years and exchange no more than a few words with them in all that time. We no longer rely on our neighbours to inform and entertain us and are more likely to speak online to total strangers on the other side of the world than the person we know on the other side of the wall.

The irony is, of course, that we are as much at risk from the attentions of the dishonest online as we are in our homes. I have decided that I will never bank online as I’ve seen one news story too many about errors made by various banks. I get so many phishing emails mentioning HSBC that it has put me off becoming a customer. My partner spent Christmas Day eliminating a virus that had wormed its way into his PC. Fraudulent websites are so convincing that even the most alert are sometimes taken in. However, when it comes to emails Mr Musa Mohamad, Mrs Madina Dauda and Mr Hassan Karim should probably give it a rest as I’m unlikely ever to respond to their “urgent appeals” although I’m glad to know that I “remain blessed in the Lord”. It must be worth their while to keep up the relentless attempts to dupe people in this way although I can’t help thinking that it might be more fruitful to invest in the air fare to the UK and rifle through the recycling boxes out put every week by the trusting. Oblivious to the concept of shredding confidential documents, they discard bank statements and payslips, unaware of the goldmine they provide for those engaged in ID theft. Or they could just stick their hands into a few letterboxes.

I know that I will become much more vulnerable as I get older. An elderly neighbour told me that she is often the target of fraudsters via her telephone. Because she isn’t expecting the call she is not on her guard and before she knows it she has given away personal information to someone she cannot see and has never met. She has a piece of tape marked with a cross on the receiver to remind her to watch what she says when she lifts it. “Boiler room” fraud has deprived some of thousands of pounds in this way. I can see why some older people own the sort of dog you choose not to pat and that shreds their mail with enthusiasm. When I get to that age (and possibly even before that) I will have a pair of highly trained Dobermans called Heckler and Koch - I already fantasise about the next miscreant feeling the heat of their breath on his arse as he flees the neighbourhood.

http://www.met.police.uk/crimeprevention/burglary.htm

A fresh steed for Sir Galahad

There have been times when, as the passenger in a car, I have seen some other traveller lurking miserably on the hard shoulder, waiting to be rescued. And I’ve usually said out loud “Poor thing. I’m glad that isn’t me.”

If you travel by car there is always a chance that something will go wrong, in fact your car may still be parked in front of your home when a problem becomes apparent. If you are really unlucky it will happen on a bank holiday, miles from home and in the worst weather.

It happened to us at this time of year, Boxing Day to be precise, crammed into the car with two other people on a visit to relatives. It was maddening, we were almost there when it became clear that something was wrong and my partner pulled over as soon as he could just as the engine gave out. The rest of us sat there while he disappeared into the pouring rain to call for help (this was before mobile phones became widely available), gritting our teeth as every passing car left our own rocking in their wake. Woomph. Woomph woomph. It was more than a little frightening.

After what seemed like an age he squelched back, chilled to the bone and not particularly happy. We had a long wait ahead of us. Along with thousands of other people we had chosen to visit someone else by car and a sizeable proportion of us were in the same situation, waiting to be rescued. All the breakdown services were stretched. It became noticeable that some drivers weren’t put off speeding by the atrocious weather .We felt very vulnerable but there was nowhere else to wait. We were extremely lucky that one mechanic broke off from the job he was tasked with to tow us to a nearby petrol station which was of course closed. There was a pub nearby otherwise things could have become even more unpleasant. The edible goodies that were intended as gifts were consumed and we ran out of things to talk about.

By the time another mechanic arrived to tow us back home we were feeling really desperate. Decorum prevented us from planting big wet kisses on his face and hugging his knees but he could probably tell we were pleased to see him. That tired man had become a knight in shining armour and his truck a white horse.

Since that experience I have become aware of just how big a risk those who repair vehicles at the side of the road really take. That vulnerability applies to anyone who has to rely on one of those glowing jackets and the common sense of passing drivers for their safety - the jackets are usually more apparent than the common sense. A moment’s inattention by a passing motorist or poor travel conditions can leave them injured and fighting for life.

This is what happened to Tyrone Williams in 2000 as he worked on a car parked on the hard shoulder, only it was a lorry that hit the car he was working on. The accident left him with multiple fractures and a number of injuries that were not identified at the time. He is unable to work. Today Ty is trapped at home, missing out on the normal everyday activities that we take for granted.

I have some idea of what that is like as illness has left me stranded indoors and reliant on other people for long periods of time. The chores that others find tedious become the sort of thing you long to do. The weekly shop, the trip to the post office, collecting your kids from school. Miss out on these and you are missing out on life and community. The isolation begins to have a debilitating effect that is a powerful as the physical one of the original injuries.

Ty has used mobility scooters but the severity of his injuries have left his spine in such a delicate state that he is left in agony in spite of pain relief medication. What he really needs is a wheelchair with the degree of suspension that will protect his spine but allow him access to daily life. You won’t be surprised to hear that this is going to be expensive - £3,395 expensive to be precise. Fortunately Ty has an old friend and fellow mechanic to help him out. Corporal Randall-Eyre, known as Bear, has set up a fund in the hope that anyone who has ever been rescued by someone like Ty will remember it and make a donation.

http://tywilliamsfund.wordpress.com/about/

UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE THAT THE MONEY HAS NOW BEEN RAISED AND TY HAS HIS SCOOTER - WELL DONE TO BEAR FOR HIS EFFORTS.

As I write this there are a great many people stranded in cars waiting to be rescued. It may be for mechanical reasons or because of the heavy snow. The person who reaches them will do it on spite of feeling tired and hungry because he is prepared, quite literally, to go the extra mile to keep someone safe. It isn’t just about fixing an engine and getting paid for it. The man who towed us to the petrol station years ago didn’t have to do it but he could see that we were in a precarious situation and he dealt with it. When you curl up under the duvet tonight spare a thought for all those who are just about to go to work in the cold and dark, to get you home for Christmas.

A pumpkin free zone

I’ve just finished re-reading “The Green Man” by Kingsley Amis in time for Halloween, a total coincidence but a great antidote to the US style “trick or treating” that seems to have taken over the country, largely encouraged by retailers as a way of getting in some more customers in the run up to Christmas.

Published in 1969, “The Green Man” describes the encounter by Maurice Allington, proprietor of the inn of the same name, with the ghost of Dr. Thomas Underhill. Allington discovers that he has a few things in common with the wicked 17th century parson and this connection is manipulated by Underhill. A womanising, alcoholic rogue, Allington spends as much of his time having affairs as he does running his inn. At the beginning of the book he is trying to set up a threesome with his wife and latest girlfriend and his alcohol intake is such that he cannot tell at first whether the apparition is actually down to booze. By the end we learn whether Allington has redeemed himself and conquered his fear of death. Set in a sweaty English summer at the end of the 1960’s this book will keep the winter away for a while. It is worth reading just for the way it evokes that time. One of my favourite characters is the appalling Reverend Tom Rodney Sonnenschein.

I have wondered whether Halloween evolved as a way to deal with a fear of death, the dark, the unknown. In Mexico, they celebrate the memory of those family members who have died on El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), on the 1st and 2nd of November. Although skulls and bones are very much in evidence it isn’t about fear. Halloween seems to have developed differently in Protestant countries. I was taught about it at primary school but don’t remember it having the same impact that it does now. The impression I get is that it was something that was marked in the north of England and Scotland. It only gained popularity throughout the UK as a result of US television programmes and films.

I almost gave in and bought one of the large skulls in the window of a shop around the corner but am now glad that I didn’t as they are probably available at half the price now and do I really want it anyway? Apart from that I am not sure whether I want to give in at all to the plastic Halloween that takes over at least one supermarket aisle in September (alongside Christmas). Our experience of Halloween at our current address means that we now turn off the lights and put up a sign asking trick or treaters to stay away.

Years ago we answered the door to a tiny little girl, whose mother was some way off, and wondered what she could be thinking of to let her fragile child do this. I knew that there were a number of loud (if not dangerous) dogs in the street at the time, owned by nervous pensioners. Just having them bark at you could be frightening for an adult so I can’t imagine how a small child could have coped with it. On another occasion the door was answered to loud and demanding knock. A masked child had the wheel of his bike up against the front door and expected to be welcomed with open arms and, presumably, a bucket full of sweets. I can understand that, in the America depicted in “Desperate Housewives”, children are recognised by neighbours who are prepared for this kind of visitor and meet them with all the confectionary their little teeth can cope with. The problem is that I don’t live in Wisteria Avenue, there are hardly any families with children in the street and I wouldn’t recognise them if I tried.

The local Safer Communities Team has recognised that this tradition is not welcomed by everyone. They have been distributing cards to place on front doors with a polite message to put off unwanted callers. It is sad that well behaved children suffer the same discrimination as the nasty ones but I suspect the fact that we did not get any visitors this year is as much about the credit crunch as it is about good manners. I think that parents have been forced to concentrate on Christmas this year. This time around the pumpkins are for eating.

This means war

I do not cycle. This may be because I grew up in a cobbled mews, the bumpiness put me off although other children living there had bicycles. My lack of cycling experience has not influenced what I am about to say, in fact I have largely ignored bicycles and cyclists. Until now.

My three mile walk home from work between 8pm and 9pm on weekday evenings has brought me into contact with that lower form of life known as the pavement cyclist. I am expected to get out of the way of idiots who, whether they are clad in the most up to date dayglo lycra or ninja black, seem determined to kill me. Trouble is, by that time of day, I am usually too tired to move quickly enough so have to rely on their seeing me in time to stop. On more than one occasion this has been inches away from me.

To be fair, some of them have gone to the effort of attaching what could be referred to as a “bell” to their killing machine but these are usually barely audible and, from my perspective, pointless. The only warning I get is a brief tinkle seconds before one of these morons barrels past me. Sometimes they shout at me before they do this. They rarely shout “thank you” afterwards. The clear message is that they have the right of way and I am a bloody nuisance.

I know that my words will be met with irritation by those who cycle responsibly, the ones who cycle in the road, wearing high visibility arm bands/helmets/flashing lights and actually stop at lights rather than whipping round to the crossing and suddenly becoming a pedestrian. Well, none of you seem to cycle where I walk. So if you expect me to greet with excitement the news that Sky Sports has teamed up with British Cycling to organise “Skyrides” around the UK you will be sorely disappointed. It turns out that the Mayor of London will be leading a Mini Skyride to West London. Oh joy. Boris (who got into trouble for breaking the rules on his way into work on his bike) wants to encourage people to cycle around in large groups, free from the fear of being run down by cars and buses. How about enforcing the law when it comes to cycling on the pavement, Boris? So that I can walk around free from the fear of being scythed down by one of these fools?

The latest incident was on Thursday. I was walking round a blind corner when of these helmeted twits came screeching to a halt right in front of me. I did quite a lot of swearing as he swerved past me and then proceeded to cut straight across a main road, all this in the presence of a police car. I was under the impression that a cyclist could be fined £200 for this kind of offence. The Highway Code says:

145
You MUST NOT drive on or over a pavement, footpath or bridleway except to gain lawful access to property, or in the case of an emergency.
[Laws HA 1835 sect 72 & RTA 1988 sect 34]

Emergencies in most of these cases would appear to be getting home in time for dinner/the football match/a hot date.

I bet this kind of thing would stop if every cyclist was expected to wear an identification number as well as high visibility kit. Some of the people who have almost run into me have been wearing dark clothes and have no lights on their bicycles at night. I’ve seen them swerve on and off pavements, in and out of traffic. Having waited for the lights to change, like a good responsible pedestrian, I was almost run down by a man who thought the traffic lights didn’t apply to him and didn’t even see me. I understand that cyclists find car drivers aggressive and that they are often the victim of accidents themselves (I’ve seen the bloodstains) but I don’t think that this gives them the right to take over pavements. This happens even where there are cycle lanes. The Mayor wants to ensure that there is a network of them across London. Terrific. And are you going to ensure that they are used, Boris? Unlikely.

It has got to the stage where I am fairly sure that one of these days I will be killed or seriously injured by one of these selfish, irresponsible arseholes. Cyclists need to be registered and they need to be regulated. I want to be able to identify the person who has almost killed me. I think that someone who causes injury or death by riding their bicycle should not only be fined but imprisoned and banned from using one ever again. Why should elderly or disabled people be put off walking our streets because they have been frightened by an incident like this?
Please consider signing the petitions to which I have added links.
　
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7498562.stm
www.livingstreets.org.uk/news_and_info/pb9_pavement_cycling.php
petitions.number10.gov.uk/dangerouscycling/
petitions.number10.gov.uk/IDCyclists/
petitions.number10.gov.uk/NightBikes/
petitions.number10.gov.uk/canal-no-bikes/