Pick and mix

Today we are raising a brimming tankard in honour of the rambling Irish Grandad, who has performed the sterling public service of putting online the archives of the Raccoon Arms (see sidebar). Grandad, your very good health!

Meanwhile, I've been doing a spot of housekeeping here in the Tavern, and, among the dust and cobwebs, I found an assortment of notes which never made it online.

For a variety of reasons, these draft (or daft) fragments either resisted further development or proved too insubstantial to make a reasonable post. Rather than throw the whole lot out with the rubbish, I thought I'd offer a few of them for your edification and amusement this Bank Holiday weekend so, in no particular order, here we go:

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Every now and then you hear of a demise so bizarre that you can imagine St Peter at the Pearly gates, quill in hand, pausing and looking up from his list in utter amazement: "You did what?"

In keeping with its chosen role as purveyor of exotic and salacious news stories from around the globe, the Telegraph last week brought us the tale of a Michigan woman who was admitted to hospital with a fatal gunshot wound to the eye.

St. Joseph Public Safety Department Director Mark Clapp told the Kalamazoo Gazette 55-year-old Christina Bond was “having trouble adjusting her bra holster and could not get it to fit the way she wanted it to.” 

In an attempt to sort out the problem, she apparently bent forward to have a closer look, whereupon the gun went off; although 55 is probably rather too late in life to qualify for a Darwin Award, this untimely departure surely deserves some kind of honourable mention.

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With apologies to readers of a sensitive disposition:

The Clacton Gazette surpassed itself this week with the tale of a couple observed in flagrante delicto on Martello Beach in broad daylight amid the crowds of promenading holidaymakers.

For reasons known only to himself, one witness decided to film their antics and, presumably, share the result with the local paper, leading to this exquisite quote from the article:

The couple’s identity is unknown. Their faces can’t be seen on the video but the woman is believed to have a bulldog tattoo on her back.
 

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And finally, this one just defied any attempt to make sensible use of it but remains one of my favourite headlines:

Giant gorilla made from 40,000 spoons proves popular at Llangollen Eisteddfod

A prestigious award

Out with the Oscars! Banish the Baftas! Douglas Carswell, newly-hatched UKIP MP and occasional muse of this blog has been shortlisted for the Westminster Public Affairs’ Political Twitter Awards 2015 (nope, me neither).

He's one of six hopeful contenders for the Funniest Tweet Award with:

“Are there enough Lib Dems left to form a circular firing squad?”

It's not exactly going to have them rolling in the aisles, but I suppose that, in politics, you have to take your laughs where you can find them.

Still, it's better to be known for that than for the fact your daughter used your twitter account to invite all your 28,000 followers to play 'Hello Kitty World'. In any case, Carswell probably needs cheering up, since the other boys in Parliament have been hiding his homework and calling him names:

He said: “The Bufton Tufton element of the Tory party has definitely started to get a bit cross with me.” But he wouldn’t be drawn on how they had expressed their distaste – and insisted he didn’t care. 

Last month, Carswell arrived at his place on the House of Commons benches to find that someone had scrawled “FO” on his prayer card – short for “F*** Off”.

Wouldn't it be nice if the next election brought us a crop of grown-ups - or, even better, a Parliament prepared to work together for the greater good of the British people. No chance of that, of course; the tribalism and point-scoring is far too deeply ingrained.

As for the Lib Dems, with Nick Clegg in charge, the result is surely something more like this...

Stranger Danger and Pork Pies

Food for thought this week:

Two youngsters reported being approached by a stranger as they walked to school along Coppins Road on Thursday.

They claimed to have run away from the man and reported the incident to teachers when they got to school.

Schools have strict protocol for situations like this; the other pupils were warned and text alerts were sent out to parents - no doubt causing much fear and alarm.

The police were called and investigated the alleged incident, as a result of which:

A spokesman said: “Officers have spoken to the two boys who reported the accosting incident and are satisfied that it did not take place.”

It would be satisfying to think that the boys were soundly told off for lying and required to apologise to all concerned for the unnecessary panic and the waste of police time but, alas, it may well not be that simple.

As plenty of ex-teachers have found out the hard way, most school policies require pupils' stories of threats to their well-being - however far-fetched - to be accepted at face value, thanks to the grossly-oversimplified orthodoxy that 'children don't lie about abuse'. A false story is thus deemed to be the product of misunderstanding or error.

In an attempt to establish the truth, pupils are likely to be told that withdrawing the story will not result in punishment. However serious or malicious the allegations or wide-reaching the consequences, they can walk away scot free - though they may be offered counselling to address any 'issues' that could have encouraged them to come up with the story in the first place.

There have always been children who have a complicated relationship with the truth; our forebears dealt with it though a combination of chastisement and the fear of God but, in our more enlightened age, the stakes have never been lower.Whether the motive is idle mischief-making or deliberate malice, children know that a lie is unlikely to bring about any serious retribution, whether human or divine.

The idea is for the school to offer pupils an easy way out so they can back down without fear of punishment; the law of unintended consequences says that, a few years down the line, the lesson such children have learned about their own importance and lack of accountability is likely to bear dangerous fruit.

One (more) night in Clacton

Dedicated to JuliaM, for inspiring me to resume work on this - an earworm shared is, it turns out, an earworm doubled.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9cNtrrCP0E

Clacton, Northern Essex setting,
And I think we all know what Westminster's getting;
The delectable sight of Carswell in the
Role of spectre at the Tory dinner.

Time flies, doesn't seem a minute
Since Nigel Farage said he’d help him win it;
All change, don't you know that when you
Piss off the electorate they turn against you?

In Eastleigh, Heywood and Middleton
Or Rochester or, or this place...

One night in Clacton and the world's his oyster;
Carswell got a mandate for the world to see.
He left your ship, now you can watch him hoist a
Purple skull and crossbones there beside the sea;
Cameron, here’s a taste of how it just could be.

One town may yet lead to another;
Are you really sure of those places, Brother?
It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity
You Tories ignored the world outside the city.
What do you mean
'It's just one unimportant provincial town'?
Get out, walk in any street;
Ask some questions of the people that you meet.
You’ll find they’ll say it’s too late to restore the myth your motives are the purest;
No chance - expenses scuppered that line, Sunshine!

One night in Clacton and the Tories humbled;
Media portray despair and ecstasy.
One night in Clacton, now which seat will tumble
To Nigel Farage and his company?
I can feel that Devil walking next to me!

One night in Clacton

A busy week continues to keep me away from the blog but this seems a good time for an updated version of of this post from May 2013...

*****

This song was somehow inevitable, given the quasi-mythical status that the media seem to be attributing to this larger-than-life character.

With apologies to Stan Ridgway...

I was sitting in my local, feeling rather down;
I’d been drinking on my own since half past five.
It was visiting the polling station left me without hope
When I'd seen the parties hanging around outside.
I was looking for the courage to go back and see who'd won
And I sighed as I contemplated Britain’s fate;
Just then a chap in a fedora with a shocking purple tie
Appeared there at my shoulder and said "Wait."

 He offered me a pint and said "Don't worry, son, I'm here;
If Cameron wants to tangle now, he'll have me to dodge."
I said, "Well, thanks a lot!" I told him my name and asked him his
And he said to me "The name’s Nigel Farage".

'Oh, no, no, no!' said Farage;
'The English aren’t as docile as they seem;
Oh, no, no, no!' said Farage;
'Things are going to change now UKIP’s on the scene.'

Well, we talked all night, side by side, while the votes were counted in
And I wondered how the drastic shift began
'Cause now support for UKIP seemed to spring up everywhere
And I wondered if this was all Farage’s plan.
"They called us clowns and fruitcakes, but UKIP have the last laugh," he said,
"Perhaps the government now understand
That Britons may be tolerant but we’ll only take so much
Of the EU wanting to keep the upper hand -
Just let them try..."

And I knew this was somethin' we'd seen in Brussels,  'cause I remember how he was pullin' a metaphor right outta thin air and swattin' von Rompuy with it from here to kingdom come...

When the count was nearly over we shook hands and said goodbye;

He just winked at me from the door and then was gone.
When I got back to my family I told 'em about my night
And about the time I'd spent with Nigel Farage.
When I said his name, the others gulped and then they took my arm

And said to me, “That really can’t be right”,
And they pointed to the television; “There’s Nigel Farage
And he's been right there on News 24 all night!

(Feels like he's been there all week long...)"

 Well I know I must have imagined it – I’d been drinking like a fish –

Though as hallucinations go, it’s pretty large,

But it’s certain UKIP’s won a seat and it looks like they're here to stay,
And we’re all going to see much more of Nigel Farage.

(It's been drawn to my attention that iPads and phones don't always display the embedded videos; if you spent the mid-80s doing more worthwhile things than listening to the top 40 on a Sunday night - "No, honestly, I am doing my homework!" -  you can follow the 'Stan Ridgway' link to Youtube to hear the tune.)

Holding up the mirror

(LONDON, 1751, about tea-time...)

"'Ere, are you Mr 'Ogarth?"

"Yes, I am. What can I do for you?"

"'S about that picture you got in your window."

"Ah yes, 'Gin Lane'. A satirical portrayal of modern society. I'm rather proud of it, actually; in fact, I'm planning to make a print of it to sell."

"It'll 'ave to go, squire."

"What?"

"It's a bad influence, see? All that drunkenness and so on; it's offensive, like. The Beadle's on 'is way and 'e wants you to get rid of it; it's all part of 'is new plans for a sober October. Burning's best - it'd go up lovely on the fire!"

"You can't do that - it's a work of art!"

"Don't matter, squire; can't have a picture like that where people might see it and get the idea they wants a strong drink."

"But... but... the whole thing is meant to show the evils of drinking cheap spirits instead of good honest beer. It's satire!"

"Couldn't say anything to that, squire; Beadle's against beer too, he is. In fact, 'e's dead set against all that sort of thing. Now 'and it over before 'e gets 'ere and we'll be on our way. I'm sure you don't want any trouble now. After all, it's 'ardly as if it's a loss to future generations, is it?"


(Inspired, of course, by recent events in Clacton.)

"You say black, I say white..."

Here we go again:

An MP has slammed this weekend’s controversial naked bike ride through Clacton as “offensive exhibitionism”.

Yes, it's Clacton's naked bike ride again. According to the subsequent online edition of the Gazette, opinion on last year's one was divided to say the least:

Clacton's first naked bike ride was such a success it could pave the way for the UK’s first naked fun run.

and:

Outraged councillors are calling for a clampdown on naked events, which they said could harm tourism in Tendring.

So, good or bad? And why do it at all? Some supporters describe the ride - last year's was a not insignificant 17km - as an “environmental protest against car culture and a celebration of the bicycle and the body”, placing it firmly in the counter-culture camp, while others attach a more safety-conscious message, claiming it highlights the vulnerability of the cyclist on the road.

Even so, Carswell does have a point, at least about the exhibitionism; it's likely that the event will primarily attract those already accustomed to appearing naked in public. Few people, after all, would want their first tentative dabble in naturism to take place in the middle of Clacton with the local press photographer on hand.

On the other hand, if people want to take their clothes off and aren't breaking the law, are they really doing any harm? It is, apparently, entirely legal to participate in a mass bike ride while totally harry-starkers, though I wouldn't advise stripping off and hopping onto the nearest Boris Bike in a built-up area to test the rules.

This means that those in opposition - which, according to the press, include the council and the police (who, since they will still accompany the riders, have presumably been ordered to keep their eyes averted) - have no way to prevent the ride going ahead. They have, however, decided to do what they can.

The ride has therefore been re-routed so that the cyclists do not go through the town centre and, in an unusual variation of pre-event publicity:

The council has published the route so people can avoid the bizarre spectacle.

A deluge, viewed from afar

It is amazing to think that, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can sit in the Tavern and watch events unfold miles away; in this case, the impending flooding of Jaywick in Essex.

Firstly the emergency services are out and about; the expected tidal surge is bad news for a low-lying coastal community, so all 2,500 residents have been asked to evacuate their homes.

Not everyone has cooperated, though:

BBC Look East's Gareth George says: "If the householders say they staying, they are asked to sign a declaration saying they have had the risks explained to them." 

But he added most residents he spoke to were "staying put".

Which seems distinctly unwise in the face of the Environment Agency warning of 'danger to life' but might be explained by this tweet from the Gazette:

Also just been stopped by a diligent @EssexPoliceUK officer who said there are reports of ppl driving around Jaywick looking for empty homes

There is something particularly despicable about the idea of opportunistic looters converging on the scene of a reported emergency evacuation - who would ever have thought this would one day be the use to which mankind would put mass media and the internal combustion engine?

As a result, the police have stepped up their patrols, so, all in all,  the place must be getting pretty crowded, what with the local news reporters out in search of a good location shot or human interest story - though perhaps the official warnings will mean they are excused the usual piece to camera standing ankle-deep in water.

And, just to add to the confusion, there's another bunch of people wandering around too; the prospect of a record-breaking storm surge has brought the Darwin Award hopefuls out in force, to judge by the weary tone of this late-night announcement:

WARNING: Residents are urged to stay away from the flood risk areas as they could be putting themselves in danger.

Police are receiving information people are going to the area to watch the flooding. The high seas and rising water is unpredictable and the emergency services do not want to have to rescue people who have put themselves in potentially dangerous situations.

And to think that all of this rich tapestry of humanity is being relayed live for the benefit of a potential audience of millions (including one insomniac blogger who really should stop and try to get some sleep)! In a way, it's reassuring that what happened in 1953 can never be repeated, thanks not only to improved coastal defences but also to abundant and detailed information about the threat.

But it's also frustrating that, along with preventing (one hopes) loss of life, this mass communication has brought out the imprudent, the foolhardy and the downright dishonest.

It all sounds like a cross between 'Assault on Precinct 13' and 'Dawn of the Dead' with a touch of '2012' thrown in for good measure - I'm very glad to be heading for a quiet night a long way away.

All the fun of the fair

Amid the chaotic aftermath of the storm, the prize for the most picturesquely bizarre damage has surely to go to North Essex,where the headlines read:

Storm damages orangutan enclosure

and

Pier's helter-skelter blown down

Yes, it's our old friend Clacton Pier again; while Walton, just up the coast, put in its own bid for media coverage with some dislodged metal sheeting (in a rather nauseating shade of yellow, which gave a distinctly festive air to the photographs), Clacton has romped home with as spectacular and alliterative a bit of damage as you are likely to see for a while.

According to an eye-witness:

“It was quite surreal as it bounced on landing and just looked like a flimsy piece of plastic.”

How reassuring! I can't decide whether this means local parents will, in future, be reluctant to entrust their little darlings to the attractions or whether they will be queuing up to shove their sprogs onto the remaining machinery when the pier reopens.

Or perhaps they'll take them to the zoo in the hope of seeing an orangutan escape.


Meanwhile, in all the recent meteorological fuss, another fly-by might just escape notice: 2013 UV3, discovered last week, will be zipping past today at a mere 280-odd thousand km away.

Time to raise another glass, I think!

A quiet couple of days coming up at the blog:

(cheezburger)

A vignette of today's Britain

From the BBC:

Special orthopaedic boots belonging to the two-year-old daughter of Hollyoaks actress Carli Norris that were thought to have been stolen, have been handed in to police.

The leather boots were handmade for the child; a disabling condition in both feet means that she needs them to walk properly. On August 1st, they were accidentally left on top of a car park payment machine outside Colchester Hospital, where they had just been collected; when the family went back, they were gone.

Police issued CCTV pictures of two people they want to speak to; [...] a man and woman, both thought to be in their 50s, who were a few places behind the family in the queue at the machine.

This morning, the boots were handed in to Clacton police station by a woman 'from the area'.

So what happened during those ten days? Did conscience get the better of them; were the thieves swayed by the public appeal by a celebrity mum? Or was it the little girl's disability that made all the difference?

The shoes could not have been worn by any other child, but that was presumably not evident at first. In much the same way, my prescription sunglasses in their 'designer' case were stolen on a cross-channel ferry; I like to imagine the thief or the ultimate purchaser painfully squinting through them with a truly abominable headache.

I suppose much depends on whether they were stolen to use or to sell - the regular large car boot sales near Clacton may be relevant here - but it's clear they were removed from the hospital surroundings and taken to someone's home; the ten day and fifteen mile interval makes it highly implausible that the intention was to hand them in all along.

It would surely take a distinctly lax morality and a lack of consideration to steal a child's shoes in the first place, yet, for the seemingly unscrupulous perpetrators, the public appeal of a disabled little girl and her actress mother outweighed the risks of being traced when returning them.

Voilà: opportunistic criminality, sentimentality and celebrity worship all rolled into one little story.

Pinkie's Heirs

'When you met him face to face he looked older, the slatey eyes touched with the annihilating eternity from which he had come and to which he went.'

When Graham Greene describes the seventeen-year-old killer Pinkie Brown in his 1938 novel 'Brighton Rock', the boy's youth is shocking, his vicious precocity part of what gives him ascendancy over older associates hardened to violent crime.

'The Boy', as he is referred to throughout the book, specialises in extorting protection money from small businesses and in the gruesome form of intimidation he applies to the witness of one of his crimes.

'I don't need a razor with a polony. If you want to know what it is, it's a bottle.'
 'You don't drink, Pinkie.' 
'Nobody would want to drink this.' 
'What is it, Pinkie?' '
Vitriol,' the Boy said, 'It scares a polony more than a knife.'*

Today, the casual use of knives by teenagers has become a feature of British society. Regular readers may remember this story from North Essex and there have been others since; last September, for instance, a 17-year-old student was stabbed to death at a party in a suburb of Colchester.

Three suspects aged 18 and 19 are on bail, while a 17-year-old has already been charged with the murder. And, while any violent death is disturbing, the aftermath of this one has taken a particularly unsettling turn:

Two people have been charged with intimidating witnesses following the murder of Jay Whiston. 

Alan Loughlin, 18, of Titania Close, Colchester, was charged with three counts of intimidating a witness. Kieran Marsh, 18, of Creffield Road, Colchester, was charged with two counts of intimidating a witness. 

A 16-year-old girl, and an 18-year-old woman from Clacton have been re-bailed, also on suspicion of witness intimidation until August.

Remember, although these are their current ages, the original crime was committed nearly a year ago, when most of them were probably under 18 and one of the girls under 16.

While the 1947 film of 'Brighton Rock' cast a baby-faced Richard Attenborough in the role, the more recent version chose to play down Pinkie's extreme youth, perhaps because, in today's Britain, it no longer has the power to surprise us.


*Greene's research appears to have let him down at this point; while he is presumably thinking of the Polari word 'palone' (girl), 'polony' (sic: a corruption of Bologna) is a well-established term for a salami-type sausage.

It all depends which way you look at it....

A PROJECT aimed at slashing problems caused by late-night drinkers in Clacton town centre has been scrapped.

This is the unequivocally-named Clacton SOS Bus, which has been a feature of the town centre between 8.30pm and 2.30am on Friday and Saturday nights for the past ten months.

The bus, like its counterpart in Colchester, aims to provide medical and other emergency support to those who run into trouble in the town centre. The organisers' website describes their partnership with 'doctors and emergency care practitioners who can glue, stitch and assess individual cases'.

For those requiring less DIY and more TLC, the staff also liaise with local emergency and support services to help people avoid ending up in A&E, police custody or the pages of JuliaM's blog.

However, while the Colchester emergency staff have been kept busy helping 3,500 people over the past 3 years, the Clacton SOS Bus came to the end of its pilot run last week and will not continue because 'not enough people have used the service'.

Sarah Wright, chief executive of Open Road, said during the pilot only 156 people needed help.

Well, that's a good thing, surely...

“The pilot has been a useful exercise and we have learnt a lot about the needs of people frequenting Clacton on weekend evenings,” she said.

...oh!

“However, the number of people taking advantage of the facility has been disappointing.

Well, I suppose if you are chief executive of an organisation with a £2.5m annual budget, receiving 'generous funding' for your operations from partners including Colchester Community Safety Partnership, Tendring Community Safety Partnership, Essex Police, North East Essex Primary Care Trust and Essex County Council, you probably don't see things quite the way the rest of us do.

A definite affirmative

From our old friend the Gazette: a question, presumably, of quantity or quality...

Clacton crews tackle van blaze in Jaywick

FIREFIGHTERS were called to a blazing van
which was 100 per cent alight.

As an added bonus, the next headline's a cracker too:

Dog wardens scoop prestigious award

Hold the front page!

Sometimes I think the offices of local newspapers must be filled with aspiring newshounds fervently hoping for some kind of grand disaster.

The Clacton gazette is certainly no exception, if this week's paper edition is anything to go by. When news came in of a roller-coaster accident on the town's pier, it must have seemed like journalistic manna from heaven, even though the reality was less than sensational:

All seven casualties were assessed by paramedics and did not require hospitalisation. A number of the casualties were shaken-up and a few suffered neck pains.

But why let the truth get in the way of a good headline? Ladies and gentlemen, from the people who brought you last year's sensational 'TODDLER INCHES AWAY FROM FALLING OFF PIER', it's....

Ah, bless!

"The hand that rocks the cradle..."

...packs a mean punch as well, at least if this is anything to go by.

A MAN arrested for carrying a knuckle-duster has escaped jail after claiming it was his mum’s.

Hold on, what was that again?

Steve Lyttle-Byron, 22, of Aragon Close, Jaywick, was arrested with the weapon and 16g of cannabis after being searched by police on June 17. He told officers the drugs were to help his epilepsy and the silver knuckle-duster belonged to his mother.

If it's Jaywick, that explains a lot - they breed 'em tough there! But all the same...silver? As in sterling? That would surely represent a significant financial outlay.

You can almost picture the touching scene; the whole family gathered for a celebration... the kids all clubbing together to buy a special present... Mother's tearful speech -"Thank you - it's just what I always wanted!"

Ita Farelly, mitigating, said: “It is a strange set of circumstances".

That's putting it mildly...

“It is his mother’s weapon - she confirmed that over the phone today."

Ah, you can always rely on Mum to sort it all out - presumably in more ways than one, if she's telling the truth. And she obviously believes in keeping the means to do so readily to hand:

He said his father had been arrested for driving his mother’s car without insurance earlier that day. After realising he had left drugs in the abandoned car, he returned to the vehicle where he found the weapon in the glove compartment.

Young Steve's a chip off both old blocks, by the sound of it. And if he gets his temper from his mother...

He was sentenced to an 18-month anger management programme and told to pay £25 costs. The knuckle-duster will be destroyed.

...then it's perhaps litttle wonder that the police decided to contact her by phone rather than in person, discretion always being the better part of valour - at least in Jaywick.

Show me the way to go home...

You can always count on the Clacton and Frinton Gazette for a good read, and this week is no exception.

A man has been jailed for stealing an ambulance fast response car.

*gets popcorn*

Daniel Glover led police on a high-speed chase along the A12 after stealing the vehicle in Clacton in the early hours of New Year's Day. The car was only brought to a halt when officers used a ‘stinger’ to burst its tyres.

It seems he adopted this unusual choice of transport to get back to his London home after attending a party in Clacton. Police found him to be more than twice the drink-drive limit - probably much more, if the excuse he offered is anything to go by:

He claimed he did not know the vehicle was an ambulance car as it was dark at the time.

Just for the record, this is an ambulance fast response car.

Now I may be going out on a limb here, but I'd say those blue lights on top are a bit of a giveaway, and, in any case, I'm guessing those bright yellow bits are designed to be visible even after dark, particularly under the street lights of Valley Road. Perhaps he was confused by the fact that the word AMBULANCE on the bonnet is written backwards.

Meanwhile, according to the Telegraph, a family member adds an interesting element of confusion to proceedings:

Outside court Glover's father said: "He doesn't drink normally and he didn't know what he was doing. He thought it was a taxi."

To be honest, it's not really the best plea in mitigation, particularly for a man who actually makes a living delivering taxis on a daily basis. At least he admitted the offence:

Glover, 26, of Old Ford Road, Mile End, east London, admitted charges of aggravated vehicle taking, drink driving, no insurance and obstructing police.

The last of which translates as threatening to break a police officer's nose, which at least adds a certain credibility to his claim that he wanted to go home after falling out with someone at the party. They must have been glad to see the back of him.

Meanwhile 'aggravated' doesn't even begin to cover the offence of stealing a paramedic's car (and equipment) on A&E's busiest night of the year - an hour after the theft, a man was attacked and fatally injured in Clacton and, at the same time, a security guard was stabbed in nearby Walton.

The subsequent silence on that story leads me to hope the victim is making a full recovery but he's certainly had his fill of bad luck; it's bad enough to be attacked in the early hours by knife-wielding thugs without finding out that some drunken oaf has stolen the local paramedic's car.

Drama at the End-of-the-Pier Show

Sometimes you read a story and the word 'compensation' hovers, unspoken, in the air. This one is crying out for comment all the way through: I'm no JuliaM, but I'll give it my best shot...

A CHILD was inches away from falling off Clacton Pier, a family claims.

*gets popcorn*

Oscar Weston, aged 20 months, was playing at the seaward end of the pier when he came close to a gap in the fence preventing people falling into the waves. 

20 months - that would be rather less than two of your Earth years. Ye gods! The child is barely out of nappies - or possibly not even that - and he's let loose to run around at the far end of Clacton pier, an environment that has full-grown adults gripping tightly onto the rails (or is that just me?).

Meanwhile, let us pause a moment to savour the poetic flourish of  'the waves'; the Gazette, it seems, is harbouring a reporter who dreams of something altogether more creative. He evidently also has a keen sense of the dramatic:

His granddad Mark was watching and called out to Oscar, before rushing over to block off the gap with his leg and taking him away.

Well, thank goodness for that! A responsible adult intervened to protect a child from a hazard; where I come that's known as childcare, but perhaps they do things differently in Clacton. Meanwhile, the grandfather is in no doubt of his own heroic role in this near-tragedy:

“Oscar is well-behaved and luckily he stopped when I shouted across to him. If I hadn’t been able to put my leg across he would have drowned."

More poetic licence here, perhaps - the gap in question being easily bridged by one man and his leg: I know toddlers aren't very big, but they don't tend to dive head-first through apertures like this...

Handy, isn't it, how the drama of a narrowly-missed drowning prevents anyone - apart from cynics like me, of course - asking the obvious question; why was the child so far from his supervising adults that the nearest one had to 'shout across' and  'rush over'.

Nearly two decades ago, the abduction of Jamie Bulger sparked off a national demand for reins for toddlers; for months afterwards, nearly every small child out walking in public was firmly tethered. We, meanwhile, were ahead of the game - the Artful Dodger* at three was regularly secured with both reins and wrist-link on shopping trips, having extricated himself from each separately on more than one occasion.

The use of such devices seems to have fallen into abeyance once again - in Britain at least; I'm told they are still common in Germany and Holland, though in the freedom-loving US-of-A a passer-by once threatened to report my sister to the authorities for 'keeping that poor child on a leash like an animal'.

Take a trip through any busy town centre today and you'll be treated to the heart-stopping sight of free-range toddlers hopping on and off the kerb while their mothers bulldoze heedlessly ahead with their pushchairs - with supreme irony, you can be sure those same mothers would scream blue murder if they saw a strange adult approach one of their children, even if it were to lift it out of the path of oncoming traffic.

At least in this case, all seems to have ended well; the family have, one hopes, learned a valuable lesson and the readers of the Gazette have enjoyed a little bit of vicarious jeopardy; under the circumstances and in today's sensation-hungry culture, it seems almost churlish of the Pier's management to adopt quite such a low-key response:

"...an incident was reported to a ride operator regarding a hole in the fence of the pier perimeter. Once notified maintenance staff attended the area and carried out repairs immediately."

Still, if, by any chance, you were thinking of putting in an offer for neighbouring Walton Pier - currently on the market: a snip at £2.5 million - it might be best to remember the Weston family and make sure you put up a sign; 'Under-5s should be kept on a lead at all times'.


* Whose Houdini-esque feats included escaping on his first day at playgroup and setting off for home - though, unlike several parents recently, I never felt the need to take the story to the national press. Warhol certainly hit the nail on the head as far as fame is concerned...  

Society prepares the crime;...

...the criminal commits it.
Henry Thomas Buckle

I came across a sad little news story recently about the theft of a gold necklace:

At about 11.30am on Saturday, the elderly woman was waiting at the bus stop in Bridge Street. A woman approached her and took hold of her hand, placing two gold rings in it and telling her they were free. The victim said she didn’t want them and the woman then placed a necklace over her head. The victim again said she didn’t want it and started to remove it. The woman then took the necklace off the victim, removing the victim’s own gold chain at the same time, before walking off.

Something about this rang a bell, so I did some digging around and tracked down a report from the Clacton Gazette in July 2010:

The woman approached the victim, who is in her 90s, and offered to sell her a necklace which she held it up against the elderly woman's neck. But when the pensioner got home she realised her gold necklace - worth about £200 - had been taken and that she was wearing the cheap necklace the woman had tried to sell her.

 A Google later and I had a surprising number of these thefts; for example, the Echo this week reports that there have been five cases in Southampton so far this year:

In the latest case on Wednesday May 4, just before 1.30pm, a woman was targeted on Portswood Broadway. When she said she did not want the necklaces around her neck, the women took her gold necklace worth around £1,400* and left her with a cheap one.

In fact, a brief trawl turns up a similar case in Kent in November, six cases in Ipswich and Lowestoft in December and others in Nuneaton (January), Bromsgrove and  Redditch (February) Camberley (March), Farnborough (April) and Sheffield (May) – and that’s only the ones reported online picked up by searching ‘theft +necklace’.

Perhaps the MSM haven't reported it because it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi of sensation - no violence, no trauma; just elderly women losing a bit of jewellery - but surely there must come a point when the sheer number of such crimes make them a news story? It’s all very strange – the local papers carry warnings to be vigilant but never mention that they are reporting more than a single isolated incident or localised cluster.

The modus operandi is virtually identical in each case. In only five of the 20 cases was the thief alone; all the other crimes were committed by pairs of women – on several occasions, it seems, the same pair - approaching a lone, often elderly victim at a bus stop in broad daylight and carrying out the same distraction routine.

Now it occurs to me that our town centres these days are positively heaving with CSOs, especially on Saturdays, so why has no-one picked any of them up?

Two reasons spring instantly to mind; the first is that Police forces do not seem to pool information on such trivial matters – except where thefts took place in the same police area, they have been reported as if without precedent. Thus a Kent sergeant could say 'This is quite a unique distraction technique’ when Lowestoft, Clacton and Ipswich already had cases on their books.

And secondly, there’s the small matter of the descriptions; the women are, without exception, of 'Asian' or 'middle eastern' appearance’ or ‘darkly tanned’ and most mention headscarves. But how does a CSO go about the surveillance of pairs of women ‘of Asian appearance’, however closely they match the descriptions?

Or more to the point, in today's Britain, who is going to take the risk of issuing that order?

*This has caused much speculation in the comments – who wears a £1,400 necklace to go shopping in Southampton?

Omertà - Essex style

A policeman's lot is not a happy one over Bank Holday weekends - even in the isolated Essex resort of Walton-on-the-Naze.

Police were called to a large group of men fighting in Walton on Good Friday. Officers went to Mill Lane at 6pm and found a 23-year-old man with a head injury.

No sign, then, of the 'large group', who had presumably scarpered long before the Old Bill hove in to view - the road to Walton being long, tortuous and incredibly slow. Still, they got there in time to take a statement...

The man, who claimed he tripped and injured himself, was taken to Colchester General Hospital.

Ah, that well known case of the pavement rising up and hitting someone in the face. But surely someone else had something to say about it? What about the person who made the original call?

No complaints of an offence have been reported to the police.

Hmm. Though some way removed, could it, by any chance be related to this story? Or this one? Me, I'm not saying anything.

Darwin Awards - Bank Holiday Special 2

News of another Darwin Award hopeful reaches us from Clacton, where a gripping man-vs-spider confrontation had a spectacular conclusion.

‘The man was summoned by his wife to deal with a spider she had seen scuttling behind the lavatory on Bank Holiday Monday. Not being able to reach it, the man decided to kill it by spraying it with the aerosol can.’

So far so good – although he’s probably screwed up his chances of a good reincarnation next time round – but there’s a certain poetic justice in what followed; the bathroom light wasn’t working and our hero wanted to see if the beast was indeed dead, so

‘At this point he turned to a cigarette lighter to illuminate the room, but in the process ignited the gas fumes and caused an explosion. The blast was so strong it blew the man off his feet and lifted the loft door off its hinges.’

Fortunately for him, Essex Fire Service were on hand to administer first aid and assess the situation. One has to admire their thoroughness; a spokesman later said, "We're not entirely sure whether the spider got away or not but there was no sign of it at the scene."

Regular readers* will remember the valiant Mancunian who liberally sprayed air freshener round the inside of his van before lighting a cigarette; perhaps the Darwin Awards should start a special category for this kind of thing.

*What is it with Darwin Awards and Bank Holidays?