I thought I might grab your attention with my main tale of woe - a summary of the key points of my experiences with the Underclass of Great Britain. This may amaze you - then again, it probably won't as it seems to be more and more common. I did originally post it as a comment on a blog which was turned into a standalone post - you can see a somewhat more sweary version here, along with some horrifying tales from other people.
This is a little insight into the day to day existence of what I'd hope would be considered a "regular" person when placed inside a feral den - the sort of place the welfare state has created, and why we should be so scared of it spreading that we should really consider doing something about it right now.
My partner and I had a dream of getting on the property ladder - owning a home, starting a family, you know, the sort of thing frowned upon nowadays. I work hard. So does my missus. We got what we could afford, which was a rundown heap in the middle of a place with a bad reputation. Against better judgment, we thought it would be fine.
What a bloody mistake that was.
The first year was fine, despite the supposed aura of "Abandon All Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here" the place had. Then, all of a sudden, violence. And lots of it.
Some random teens decided to throw bottles at me while walking home from work - I told them to fuck off (because make no mistake, if you mince words when confronted by kids like this, you'll end up even more dead than you're about to become). About seven of them jumped off a wall and made out they were going kill me, without actually doing it of course. What actually happened, was the biggest lads hung back and, out of the pack, comes this bizarre dwarf child (couldn't have been older than eleven, tops) who then proceeds to do this bizarre jig / dance / God-knows-what in front of me, all the while spitting on the floor and slurring insults.
Occasionally one of the bigger cretins would take a step forward, then jump back again. It was like a Riverdance for morons.
All of this was in front of one of their parents, who ignored it all (couldn't have been more then three feet away) while he worked on his car. If they'd jumped on my head and started smashing it into the pavement, I dare say he'd have carried on fixing his leaky battery.
A returned home, a little puzzled by what had just taken place. This is was on my own street, in broad daylight at four in the afternoon. Surely some mistake?
Well, as it turned out, no. No it wasn't.
Despite my best attempts at remaining anonymous, a few months later, I went out of the house and one of them was in a group congregating by some nearby alleygates. I knew he recognised me the moment I walked past, mainly because as soon as I was a few feet past them a bunch of stones started bouncing off the pavement around me. Do these kids carry rocks in their pockets at all times or something?
Anyway, that was that.
Despite having a baby in the house (who arrived halfway through the great Feral seige of 2004 to 2007), every night for three solid years - and I *MEAN* every. Single. Night....there would be items hurled at the house, at the window, abuse in the street, menacing gestures, random happenings. Didn't matter what day it was, something would happen. Christmas eve, Xmas day, New Years, birthdays, deaths, weddings.....whatever. It was insane. I lost count of the amount of times we called the police....hundreds, hundreds of times. Regular line, 999, SWAT, Special Forces, Chuck Norris.....you name it, I tried it. We contacted the council, the police, the papers, the politicians and those bastards at the housing (who were responsible for drafting in these waves of scum from other useless areas in a merry-go-round of completely insane "families").....not a bit of difference.
All the crap advice police and others wheel out - don't encourage them, don't this, don't that, don't the-other - only works on the basis that they're doing it "for a chase", as they so naively kept putting it.
Truth was, it didn't matter whether you ignored it or not. You'd still hear your windows being slammed every single night even if you failed to rise to the bait for months at a time. They didn't care. If they were going past on their way home from the chipshop or the offy or whatever, it took the bare minimum of effort to pick something up and lob it.
In fact, if you ignored it, they tended to do it all the more and with greater force. So you were screwed in any case.
The effects were immediate and obvious, and it was only after the first year of relative quiet that I took off my rose-tinted glasses and realised half the people in my street and one or two off it were already experiencing the same joys.
One night, a guy was literally forced to flee his house, jump in his car and drive to fucking Wales. He never came back, and his brother apparently had to sell his house. But then, having a wild mob of about 15 to 20 shrieking lunatics off their faces and hurling pieces of brick at your window (while trying to kick the front door in) will do that to you.
A woman over the road had her windows smashed (this was before I moved in or shortly after) - when she complained to the police about it, the little swines phoned 999 and told them she was holding one of them "hostage" - about ten minutes later, what seemed like three vanfulls of riot police arrived outside her house and wellied their way inside, so I'm told. One guy asked his neighbour to simply reverse his car off his drive so he could get his car out - the reply was a headbutt and a broken nose. Yet another little shit, well known to social services, police and everyone else (with about ten asbos to his name), threatened grown men outside a pub with a knife unless they went inside and bought him some stella.
They bought him the stella.
I could go on, but that's the kind of thing you were dealing with there. I should add, a lot of these kids were as young as ten or eleven, hanging around with a handful of older ones in their late teens. In addition, they weren't all from "broken homes" or had waves of family members on the dole - quite a few of them had both parents, a nice house, at least one (or both) parents working....however, the parents just weren't interested in controlling them and they quickly fell under the sway of the ringleaders (who were indeed from spectacularly broken homes and on benefits or being shunted from place to place via housing corporations).
Anyway.
Halloween was always the worst, mainly because where we were, it used to last about a month. It was like one of those zombie films where people start boarding everything up and hiding in an attic for six weeks. Our first child was born in the runup to one of these wonderful social carnivals, so you can imagine all the stress and worry of simply having this child pop out with no problems, then having to consider your house being battered with bricks and rockery at the same time. They almost sucked the joy out of having a child in the first place.
I still remember the night the baby had been born - left the missus in the hospital, jumped a cab home, found out the next morning (when it was light enough to see the front of the house) that it had been egged all over. They knew we'd gone off to the hospital too, because they'd seen us leaving the house with all the "here comes the baby" gear.
Bastards.
After that, the first few months we had to resort to changing the baby either in the kitchen at the back of the house (cold), or the spare bedroom upstairs (even more cold) because we were convinced a brick could come through the living room or front bedroom window at any time during the night and couldn't take the chance.
I know I'm getting away from Halloween here, so allow me to get right back to it. Each one was worse than the last. When the final one came around, it finally all kicked the fuck off.
A bunch of kids (about fifteen of them, aged between maybe 12 and 17) went to a neighbours freshly paved driveway, pulled up a few slabs, smashed them on the floor, picked up the chunks of concrete and started hurling them at the windows. Then another at the door.....then another at the windows. And another.
Months, years of endless abuse finally all clicked something inside my brain. I snapped, ran out, grabbed one of the little shits and dragged him back to the house, screaming down his ears. I'd had enough. I wanted blood.
ANYONES fucking blood.
I made that little shit - one of the main concrete throwers - stand in my garden while the missus phoned the police. Apparently some people in a neighbouring city heard my screaming, so a full contingent of police were deployed and would "arrive shortly".
Next minute, our wonderful country's welfare inhabitants are revealed for what they are.
Never mind a baby in the house when these animals were throwing what they were throwing. No, some tracksuited moron comes bouncing out of the house directly opposite mine (found out later he doesn't even live in the area, just visiting his girlfriend), and starts yelling"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT LAD? GET OFF HIM! etc etc swear swear".
I tell him what the kid did, but he didn't care. Scum look after their own. Within seconds, he's opening his boot and threatening to get his baseball bat out and "fuck me up".
I goaded him into doing it, because I so badly wanted an excuse to punch someone through a wall. He didn't, choosing to remain at a safe distance because I probably gave off the distinct smell of roid rage by this point. But I'm already thinking "fuck this shit" when lo and behold, the ratfaced child's drunken, ugly, booze-sodden grandmother appears in front of me, yelling and screaming and calling me everything under the sun. I'll never forget the next exchange.
I told her there was a baby in the house and they could have killed him if they'd put the window through.
Her reply? "GOOD!"
She then threw a punch at my head, which missed by a country mile while the idiot in the tracksuit continued to prance around by his car. I'd officially entered the twilight zone by this point.
Then the police turned up, and I had to be put in the back of their car and driven to my house as this had started to spill further and further down the street where I ran a greatly increased risk of being stabbed in the face.
I put the place up for sale the next day, got rid of it at a loss (months later, while the abuse continued) and am now paying through the nose for a house while paying a shitload in tax and NI - thanks, dole scum, I love you for that, honestly - but I tell myself its worth it to be away from places and people like that, even while being fully aware I'm paying for them to continue their shitty, worthless existence.
If I could, I'd go back and fucking napalm the whole area and nothing of value would be lost.
But I tell you what - that kid I collared was crying his fucking eyes out when I marched him back home, and that alone was worth the price of admission.
Thursday 27 November 2008
We Shall Remember Them: Neighbour "A"
Part One in a series of "a couple".
Neighbour "A" is way too formal. Let's call this guy Dave. That's not his real name, anymore than LWTU is my real name, but whatever.
Dave had moved into the same street I was to call home (or, to be more accurate, Beirut) about a year or two before me. He was a door or two down, and another neighbour said he was "nice, but a bit weird".
As it turns out, he was indeed a "bit weird", in that he could never have blended in to this kind of environment if he'd shaved all his hair off, scowled a lot and randomly punched old women in the street.
He reeked of "nice, quiet guy with big round glasses and a nervous disposition"; in other words, the sharks could smell blood from a mile away. He didn't actually do anything to warrant his incoming barrage of hate from the local thugs and hoodies; mostly, he sat in his house with his dog, commiting the heinous crime of playing poker online. His house was a bit of a mess; lived there alone, had some equally "distinctive" friends come round from time to time - but that was enough to mark him out as a candidate for some "fun".
Sure enough, by the time we got there, he was already Steven Segal in Under Siege, but minus the muscles, the guns or anything approaching a slim chance of victory. Someone had singled him out - why, didn't matter - and after that, he endured the usual barrage of airguns at the window, vague threats regarding the wellbeing of his dog, stones thrown, fence panels kicked in etc.
Imagine my dismay when I found out he'd made the clinical mistake of
a) trying to round up civic minded people in the area to "do something about it" in a public display of "we're organising talks with the police, young man" (nobody cared, and he was left to fight the good fight like the one man army that he wasn't) and
b) tried to scare them off by going outside his house and waving his camera at them.
Within days, the kids had branded him the local paedophile, and that gave the green light for non-stop harassment.
I tried to do my bit for him, mainly presenting him with another way of dealing with the trouble he endured (mostly, showing him the benefits of NOT being so obvious with his protestations while winding the kids up at the same time), and offered a sympathetic ear when possible.
I'm somewhat ashamed to say I tried to avoid speaking to him if / when he knocked at my door, though - the last thing you wanted was to be seen talking outside your house to someone already marked for justice at the hands of brick throwing hoodies as young as 13.
His stress levels were through the roof; it came close to sending him completely round the bend. Every second was spent worrying about it - when nothing happened, he went into panic overload because the thought the kids responsible were busy planning something "bigger and better" the next night.
I listened to him one night, with a sort of slack jawed amazement, as he told me (in great detail) his "masterplan" that involved removing one of his roof tiles, poking an air rifle through the gap and picking them off with headshots. As it turned out, he went for a slightly less prison-inducing option. There was a set of alleygates near his house that the kids would meet up at, shortly before launching into their nightly bouts of violence. Realising that if he could get them away from there, they'd have one less place near his house to congregate, he went on a few "nightly patrols".
What did those nightly patrols involve, I hear you cry?
Well, he had this pond. A real stinky, never-cleaned-out pond in his back garden. He went around the streets collecting dog and cat excrement, mixed it with the slurry from the bottom of his pond in a large bucket, chucked in some other junk for good measure then loaded the contents into a top-of-the-range Supersoaker, before doing random drivebys on the kids from the safety of his mates car.
While they were keeping away from the alleygates, he then took the rest of his mixture (by now perfected to super strength) and poured the lot of it from his bucket in the alleyway entrance.
Jesus Christ, did it ever stink.
Eventually, he told me one day that he'd managed to grab a flat somewhere else. I was saddened to see an ally go, but for the first time since I'd known him he actually looked alive. After he moved, I found out what had kicked off his trouble with the kids; he'd decided to sit in his front garden with his mate, drinking a few beers. Now, I don't know about you, but even in nice areas I can't think of many people who do this.
Where we were living? Oh dear.
Random displays of individuality were not a good idea. Yes, you should be able to go sit in your front garden if you so desire and do whatever the Hell you want. In practice, you need to get a permission slip from the kids at the end of the street - and unless you're outside a house smashing it up, setting fire to something or throwing bricks at a window, there's nothing down for you...
Neighbour "A" is way too formal. Let's call this guy Dave. That's not his real name, anymore than LWTU is my real name, but whatever.
Dave had moved into the same street I was to call home (or, to be more accurate, Beirut) about a year or two before me. He was a door or two down, and another neighbour said he was "nice, but a bit weird".
As it turns out, he was indeed a "bit weird", in that he could never have blended in to this kind of environment if he'd shaved all his hair off, scowled a lot and randomly punched old women in the street.
He reeked of "nice, quiet guy with big round glasses and a nervous disposition"; in other words, the sharks could smell blood from a mile away. He didn't actually do anything to warrant his incoming barrage of hate from the local thugs and hoodies; mostly, he sat in his house with his dog, commiting the heinous crime of playing poker online. His house was a bit of a mess; lived there alone, had some equally "distinctive" friends come round from time to time - but that was enough to mark him out as a candidate for some "fun".
Sure enough, by the time we got there, he was already Steven Segal in Under Siege, but minus the muscles, the guns or anything approaching a slim chance of victory. Someone had singled him out - why, didn't matter - and after that, he endured the usual barrage of airguns at the window, vague threats regarding the wellbeing of his dog, stones thrown, fence panels kicked in etc.
Imagine my dismay when I found out he'd made the clinical mistake of
a) trying to round up civic minded people in the area to "do something about it" in a public display of "we're organising talks with the police, young man" (nobody cared, and he was left to fight the good fight like the one man army that he wasn't) and
b) tried to scare them off by going outside his house and waving his camera at them.
Within days, the kids had branded him the local paedophile, and that gave the green light for non-stop harassment.
I tried to do my bit for him, mainly presenting him with another way of dealing with the trouble he endured (mostly, showing him the benefits of NOT being so obvious with his protestations while winding the kids up at the same time), and offered a sympathetic ear when possible.
I'm somewhat ashamed to say I tried to avoid speaking to him if / when he knocked at my door, though - the last thing you wanted was to be seen talking outside your house to someone already marked for justice at the hands of brick throwing hoodies as young as 13.
His stress levels were through the roof; it came close to sending him completely round the bend. Every second was spent worrying about it - when nothing happened, he went into panic overload because the thought the kids responsible were busy planning something "bigger and better" the next night.
I listened to him one night, with a sort of slack jawed amazement, as he told me (in great detail) his "masterplan" that involved removing one of his roof tiles, poking an air rifle through the gap and picking them off with headshots. As it turned out, he went for a slightly less prison-inducing option. There was a set of alleygates near his house that the kids would meet up at, shortly before launching into their nightly bouts of violence. Realising that if he could get them away from there, they'd have one less place near his house to congregate, he went on a few "nightly patrols".
What did those nightly patrols involve, I hear you cry?
Well, he had this pond. A real stinky, never-cleaned-out pond in his back garden. He went around the streets collecting dog and cat excrement, mixed it with the slurry from the bottom of his pond in a large bucket, chucked in some other junk for good measure then loaded the contents into a top-of-the-range Supersoaker, before doing random drivebys on the kids from the safety of his mates car.
While they were keeping away from the alleygates, he then took the rest of his mixture (by now perfected to super strength) and poured the lot of it from his bucket in the alleyway entrance.
Jesus Christ, did it ever stink.
Eventually, he told me one day that he'd managed to grab a flat somewhere else. I was saddened to see an ally go, but for the first time since I'd known him he actually looked alive. After he moved, I found out what had kicked off his trouble with the kids; he'd decided to sit in his front garden with his mate, drinking a few beers. Now, I don't know about you, but even in nice areas I can't think of many people who do this.
Where we were living? Oh dear.
Random displays of individuality were not a good idea. Yes, you should be able to go sit in your front garden if you so desire and do whatever the Hell you want. In practice, you need to get a permission slip from the kids at the end of the street - and unless you're outside a house smashing it up, setting fire to something or throwing bricks at a window, there's nothing down for you...
Wednesday 26 November 2008
And so it begins
There's no real way to open up a blog with the customary "first post" (even though this is technically the second), so I might as well have at it.
I'm happy to say, I escaped.
Escaped what, you might ask?
Escaped years of living in an area populated by swarming, feral animals who only got worse as time went by (they do exist, despite what people who've likely never even been into one of these areas will tell you).
We dreamed of getting off the rental chain and onto the property ladder; because of the price of everything, all we could afford was a heap of a house in an extremely dubious area. Everyone told us it was bad; we knew the reputation. But it was that, or stay renting in an increasingly cramped house.
If this is the point where I rue the day I ever moved there, sorry - not going to happen. I don't regret it, because it toughened me in ways you couldn't possibly imagine. I've seen the most insane horrors inflicted upon other people, their pets, their homes, their cars, their lives. I had my eyes opened to the absolute madness that is England. I'm thankful for it, if somewhat perplexed by it.
Previously, I lived in an area with the similar reputation - despite this, nobody harassed you, nobody screwed with you, you could walk home from a night out with no fear of getting your head kicked in.
This place? You couldn't go out of your home if it was a moment after 3PM, which coincidentally was the time the "kids" got out of school (which looked less like a school, and more like one of those American prisons with the twelve foot high electrified fences).
There was nothing you could do to fix this place, nor cure it of its ills. You could, however, work up a cracking yarn. I hope when I'm done, you'll share some of yours with me...
I'm happy to say, I escaped.
Escaped what, you might ask?
Escaped years of living in an area populated by swarming, feral animals who only got worse as time went by (they do exist, despite what people who've likely never even been into one of these areas will tell you).
We dreamed of getting off the rental chain and onto the property ladder; because of the price of everything, all we could afford was a heap of a house in an extremely dubious area. Everyone told us it was bad; we knew the reputation. But it was that, or stay renting in an increasingly cramped house.
If this is the point where I rue the day I ever moved there, sorry - not going to happen. I don't regret it, because it toughened me in ways you couldn't possibly imagine. I've seen the most insane horrors inflicted upon other people, their pets, their homes, their cars, their lives. I had my eyes opened to the absolute madness that is England. I'm thankful for it, if somewhat perplexed by it.
Previously, I lived in an area with the similar reputation - despite this, nobody harassed you, nobody screwed with you, you could walk home from a night out with no fear of getting your head kicked in.
This place? You couldn't go out of your home if it was a moment after 3PM, which coincidentally was the time the "kids" got out of school (which looked less like a school, and more like one of those American prisons with the twelve foot high electrified fences).
There was nothing you could do to fix this place, nor cure it of its ills. You could, however, work up a cracking yarn. I hope when I'm done, you'll share some of yours with me...
Wednesday 19 November 2008
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