In Good Company: Where Can We Go?
...Today’s teenagers are short of places to go, but not money. There is a wide explosive wave of boredom that threatens to engulf most youth these days. It often erupts with sickening results...
Enid Blackburn wrote this article some years ago but it is still revelant.
‘Where can we go?’ is a persistent teenage wail at our house. When they were younger it used to be ‘What can I do?’
Where did I go at their age they often want to know? In my youth there was always a dance, also coffee bars had just been imported from America. I remember the Curzon snack bar particularly, where the film-struck like myself felt real starlet material, chewing on doughnuts and sipping ‘cawfee.’
When we could afford we went to the pictures on Saturday night. Sundays meant the tennis club or the ‘Happy Gang’ club, both run by the chapel.
Today’s teenagers are short of places to go, but not money. There is a wide explosive wave of boredom that threatens to engulf most youth these days. It often erupts with sickening results.
A band of vandals whistled the night away in St George’s churchyard, Cumbria. The appalled vicar described the £1,000 damage next day. ‘They pushed over heavy headstones, the smashed them with crowbars. The place is littered with wrecked family memorials.’
Recently a gang of older girls attacked our ten-year-old and her friend, on a busy main road. I have already dealt with one member and the others had better watch out. I believe in an ‘eye for an eye.’ Bullies deserve a taste of their own medicine, in my opinion - it’s the only language they understand.
A headmaster won his case against a local council who thought he was being too harsh. He believes in punishing misdemeanours like tardiness, smoking, disobedience and bullying. Do it once, you’re punished, do it twice, you’re punished harder.
It works and he’s right. Kids need something to kick against, if they don’t find it at home or in school they’ll search for it on the streets.
Paradoxically, discipline only succeeds when it is bonded with care. Love and discipline should ideally go hand in hand. With mothers hopping from maternity beds back to jobs, some children have neither. No wonder they grow up feeling rebellious with a desperate craving for attention. No wonder jobs are scarce.
While we were on holiday two motorcyclists screamed down on to the sands, scattering tiny sandcastle builders, they encircled the beach. Meanwhile, to the left, a corpulent figure, wearing only his moustache, tiptoed daintily through the seaweed to the sound of his mate’s guffaws.
Up in the town young figures were gathering and chanting like Hitchcock’s birds on a store window-ledge. Police cars were hovering nearby, ready for trouble – nothing happened. It was just harmless aggro. Nevertheless, there was a nag of uneasiness in the pit of my stomach as we drove off towards our peaceful little bay, two miles away.
Ask the older generation what they did in their spare time and the answer is ‘Parade.’ My mother paraded Grimscar and Waterloo woods. When dad wasn’t playing football or eating flapjacks in Lockwood Picture Palace, watching Elmo Lincoln rescuing Pearl White for a penny, he was parading Westgate. On Sunday after church this was a favourite haunt.
My 80-year-old neighbour, also a former Lockwood picture fan, sometimes danced in Honley schoolrooms. Everyone, she said, had two outfits in those days – weekday and best. Best was kept for church on Sunday. Some of her friends took a jug to the local to collect parents’ beer. ‘A certain class of folk did frequent pubs, but they were looked down on by decent people.’
It is 65 years since my friend Ethel strutted the ‘monkey run’ or ‘bandstand’ - a name given to a stretch of Manchester Road. What was the object of all this parading? ‘Looking for lads, I suppose,’ says my neighbour, with a coy smile.
Sound healthy enough to me. Now the parade ground has been transferred – they are all under cover, seeped in smoke and hiding behind their pints!
