High Priestess of the New Youth CultureI was out of Britain for years from before the time of Pink Floyd's "We don't need no ejucashun" and if what we read in Australia was any indication, the ASBOs have been around for quite some time.
Not that it was any picnic in Oz but there seems to be an element to the Brit of the sort of provocative behaviour in the young which didn't get to the colonies till later. The Sex Pistols were no accident and the Ramones emulation was more like posturing - in Britain it was the real thing, with razors and so on.
I had a British "girlfriend" at the time from Sutton Coldfield and she used to write to me about Brummieland and her inner city school. There were some wild things going down it seems and when I got back to the U.K. in '88, the acid house parties were starting up - you know, you listen to the DJ on the radio and he gives the venue for the rave - hundreds of cars turn up.
So the Gemma Anscomb thing did have its precedent. When you think it out, if she's 15, it's likely the boys are 17 to 19 or even older but even so, it gets you thinking of how bad we were [or not]. When I was teacher training at 19, there was a girls' school not far away and there was a house - probably belonging to one of them - everyone knew what happened at lunchtimes in there with up to eight or nine girls.I never got to the party, more was the pity but my mates did.
Grass, acid and coke were rampant down to maybe senior school level - 17 or 18 but this sort of thing at a much lower age wasn't really all that prevalent. My parents bought me a house when I was 22 [with my saved pittance thrown in] and I had an 18 year old guy in with me to help cover costs.
Gemma AnscombThese guys partied but the really rampant stuff was at other parents' places and I spent half an hour at one party and felt out of place - the boys were 17 to 19 but the girls were 16 on average - although they didn't seem fazed by me being there. Then one night I was elsewhere, as it was Paul's birthday and they were having a stripper.
Even now I think I should have stopped the whole thing before it started but hell - my mates were getting married and having stag nights - well, all right. I should have said no.
They trashed the place and when I got back, paralytic myself from my do, mid morning, there were two couples in my room, the stripper had used my bed but next door was insane.
One girl called Ruth, maybe 15, was being used by virtually every boy in the house and the living room had other couples round, most out cold on the floor by now, evidence of coke was about, they'd urinated over the kitchen bench and so on. Things had been torn off walls.
The fact that I still remember that girl's name is because I was shocked to the core, not because of the sex, per se but because it was indiscriminate. She was from a good family and apparently she'd gone outside to phone home at intervals.The little b-g--rs were playing on my reputation to give them the room to move with parents.
It stopped there and then, the neighbours were relieved when that crew moved out lock, stock and barrel and I never saw them again. But I feel guilty about that kid. Really bad. Even now.
Which brings me back to Gemma Anscomb. Even on our floor here in this building, there are teenagers of 14 and we had a recent incident when the parents went out and local boys were let in from the downstairs security door by the three girls in neighbouring flats.
I'm certain the parents would not believe in the least that their little Alina, in whose mouth butter wouldn't melt, would be up to gang bangs. I know and she knows that I know and gives me strange but defiant looks when I sometimes see her.
So I've read people's comments to the Mail - oh how could the parents be so naive and so on. Hey, c'mon - your kids are angels, aren't they? They'd never do such a thing, just as you'd never if you were that age again. Yeah?I wish I had a pound for every time a parent's said, "I know my son/daughter and he/she would never lie to us."
All kids lie, all kids try to feed off the gravy train for their expensive lifestyles, all kids have a separate, dark internet world to their parents who themselves think they're pretty cool dudes and eminently broad-minded. It's trendy to completely trust your kid.
It's not just the age though which upsets me and the way parents facilitate these things today through their own naivety. It's the totally lost way in which it's all being done now. - kids don't even go to a separate room any more, to the toilet or to the back of the car. It's a gangbang. Any vestige of decency does not exist any more because it's not been taught, not instilled.
Adults are terrified of appearing uncool in their kids eyes and the kids are becoming hedonistic monsters, turning savagely on anyone who tries to stop them. I had a 15 year old girl here for English, again from a good family and she didn't want to do one exercise. When I said we needed to, in order to get to the next part, she turned apoplectic and threw her pen across the room. This sudden anger at being thwarted is all part of the culture enveloping kids now. Confirmed by my students who have kid brothers and sisters.
When I was in a boarding school, I once told my colleagues about what I knew was happening behind the girls' boarding house and what was the reaction? Suspicion of how I could have known that, when they'd not seen or heard anything. This was an ego thing - each thought he/she was savvy enough and trendy enough to know, so how could Higham know?
It was bleedin' obvious. Plus kids did use to say things or give things away and I'd never shopped them until this point. I was never trusted after that, the kids didn't say anything at all any more, anywhere near me and I went back to being one of the ignorant - until the night fifteen of them were caught in the sixth form room. Hell, I could have told them that.
One lunch time I'd gone up there and there were two boys studying at desks and one in bed with two of the day girls, sisters. I let the girls get out of there but a note one had written to a boy saying what she was going to do with him was apparently dropped in the driveway and picked up by the school dragon woman.It hit the fan.
So - kids are kids and they'll always test the limits, push against the barriers and try to find out who they are that way. If adults are just jelly or even putty, the kids have no limits - over here they call it "byespryedyeli" - and they'll descend to the bestial within a few years.
While they'd curse you for opposing them, for being a brick wall, while they'd find ways of circumventing you, some part of them would eventually forgive you once they grew up.There's decency inside there somewhere but no one seems interested in it these days.
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