5 November 2001
Untrained teenagers in search of a brain
Every time I live through a school holiday, my sympathy for teachers deepens – as does my anger at that ever-growing band of parents who seem to think that bringing up children to behave in a reasonable way is an option, and not a responsibility.
At half term, I took a train from Yarmouth to Norwich. In the seats in front of me were four young teenagers – two of each sex – who were not exactly unpleasant. They were more or less unpleasant.
They spent the journey jumping around from seat to seat, occasionally simulating sex in an unconvincing way and keeping up a permanent, shouted conversation with each other, using a variety of monotonous swearing and blasphemy. Eventually they switched to ringing each other up on their mobile phones and continuing the same pointless talk.
During the entire journey there was no sign from them of intelligent life. They behaved as if they didn’t have a brain between them, or if they had, they had never been told how to use it and had mislaid the instruction booklet.
It was not their fault. Someone should have told them what life was about – and how fortunate they were even to be alive, especially in a country like this.
Some parent or other responsible adult might have added that respect for other people is in fact rewarding, that scenery or reading can be interesting and that thinking has its supporters.
But what comes across is barely restrained anger – as if they know that there is more to life than this, but no one will tell them what it is. Unfortunately it takes a parent to do that properly. It is a pity that so many of them can’t be bothered.
Teachers may be their only chance: but they are hamstrung by paperwork and by the insane removal of the means to enforce discipline.
Later I passed a woman sitting on a fence outside the Social Security office, speaking on a mobile phone. Her son, aged about 10, was trying to ask her something. She told him to go away. She did not use those words.
Blinkered way to lose battle for hearts
I see the Pedestrian Association has changed its name to Living Streets, presumably so that it appears less...well, pedestrian. Since over-pedestrianisation frequently leads to closed shops and a fall-off in trade, a more appropriate title might be Dead Streets, but I can see that this might not be so attractive.
More might be achieved if so-called sustainable transport groups like this were not so fanatically anti-motorist.
Cars are perfectly sustainable. They pollute less than buses and lorries, are the right size for roads, and if we all stopped using cars tomorrow it would make virtually no difference to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Asthma is frequently blamed on cars, but in fact is much worse in the countryside than in cities.
Car use will grow far less than these groups suggest, and most of the congestion we are familiar with is created by anti-car policies like street closures, ludicrously low speed limits and traffic “calming”. (I was delighted to hear that the citizens of one South Coast town are planning to burn an effigy of a road hump tonight.)
And yet when the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Community Conference discussed transport last week, they apparently chose to spend much of their time discussing getting people out of cars generally.
They would probably have been more usefully employed discussing how to give a conference a sensible title – or even how people were going to get to the North Norfolk Coast without cars – but their actual preoccupation was not surprising, given the heavy input by Transport 2000. This “sustainable transport group” is about as blinkered as it is possible to be, as a survey of its website will quickly reveal.
We are told constantly that the battle is for hearts and minds. As a keen walker, frequent traveller by train and rare car user, I can tell Transport 2000, Living Streets and their friends that they are losing it, because of their misdirected carpet bombing of what they think is the opposition. We are all on the same side really – human, more or less.
Four miles away from Mundesley
Readers prone to wandering in North Norfolk have reported an unusual phenomenon: according to a number of signposts, almost everywhere is four miles from Mundesley.
Various explanations have been offered to account for this, but it seems likely that a deterioration in the quality of anchor is to blame.
Anchor is a mineral which keeps Norfolk communities stable, and it can be affected by unusual atmospheric conditions, like global warming and asteroid impact.
A spokesman for Explaining Away Inc said his best guess was that an apprentice at the signmakers had become too enthusiastic, and the results of his labours had been offloaded at random. This is unusual, even in the Mundesley area.
Finely calculated parking levels
Close observers of the new Forum in Norwich will be aware that there are three levels of parking underground. I know this because I watched a BBC2 programme on the construction process, and one of the building supervisors said: “It has three levels of car parking. The lower level, the upper level and the middle level.”
I suppose that rules out the possibility that it could have a middle, an upper middle and a fifth level, though I wouldn’t put it past the council to signpost it like that.
Bonfire on loose
![[Artwork] Bonfire](/articles/images/011105CArtoon.jpg)
A bonfire is believed to be on the loose in Norfolk. Sightings have been reported from areas as far apart as Holt, Sheringham, Briston, Hempnall and Diss, and concerned groups have told reporters that they are concerned.
Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 101, who runs the Society for the Protection of Bonfires, told a reporter today: “People don’t stop and think. Bonfires are delicate things that can be easily frightened by cats, dogs and even hedgehogs. Not to mention newts.
“This one is obviously terrified. It’s all over the place.”
Police have warned readers to stay on the alert and not be complacent. If they see the bonfire they should not approach it but call the emergency services, who will soothe it by letting off fireworks.
An expert bonfire trapper, Prof V A R Scheinlich of the Hingham Autonomous Republic, has been contacted and should reach Norfolk within days, wormholes permitting.