Knuckle-draggers in cars who play vile rap music at full volume should be hurt. What they’re doing constitutes an assault on their fellow-citizens. It annoys the hell out of nine out of ten of us – and yet it appears to be gaining in popularity. Earlier today, I passed a car stuck in traffic, spewing out filth at full, bass-thudding volume (a tiny car, by the way – I wonder what else the owner possesses that’s minuscule, apart, of course, from his brain?) into the ears of Chiswickians – many with young children – out for a bit of Saturday afternoon shopping. The car in question got stuck in traffic just opposite the local police station, from which emerged a group of uniformed bobbies, who surrounded the car, arrested the driver and switched off the mus… Oh, sorry, I was fantasizing again.
The inmates from one of our local state schools congregate at the bus stop outside MacDonald’s on their way home from another hard day’s inattention and yell a lot and push each other around and make it awkward for all the nice locals who pay the cost of their schooling to get past them without being barged into. If you’re browsing in the local Waterstone’s at that time, you’re treated to strident voices uttering endless profanities, designed, no doubt, to make all us bookish, middle-class adults feel as uncomfortable as possible. Why these little Calibans should feel the need to do this escapes me, but I suspect it has something to do with their left-wing teachers convincing them they are victims who should feel aggrieved at society in general, and middle class adults in particular. The bus stop can be seen from the police station, by the way, thus ensuring that they can get away with whatever they like – if one of us was to give any of the potty-mouthed little sods a clip round the ear, Plod would, of course, be over to arrest us like a shot (unless, of course, we actually had been shot).
I’ve been watching anti-social morons dropping litter on the streets of this city for 50 years, usually when there’s a litter bin within 10 feet of them. As our society rapidly unglues, this habit would appear to be on the increase. There used to be a West Country poster campaign against this disgusting practice which began “Mrs. Bagit says…” and I always thought the smiley, elderly lady in the illustration should be shown holding a .45 Magnum, and that the rest of the slogan should read: “Go ahead, punk, make my day!”
It’s been nearly 30 years since we began being subjected as a matter of course to the racket from fellow passengers’ Walkmans. Now MP3 players, iPods and mobile phones have swelled the cacophony. There are notices gently encouraging selfish fools from playing these devices too loudly, and they’ve been just as effective as the ones pointing out that near-nudity, smelly food and feet on seats are generally frowned upon. I reckon the annoyers:annoyed ratio is currently about 20:80. If the majority decided to turn on the antisocial minority, we’d overwhelm them, and then we could get back to reading our books or newspapers or simply to being alone with our thoughts in blissful silence – just the way it used to be when this was a civilized nation.
Answering a call on your mobile phone in a bookshop is a reasonable thing to do: your child might have been in an accident, you may have got that exciting job you were interviewed for earlier in the day, your partner may be phoning with the hot news that they’ll be home at the normal time. But, if the call requires more than a cursory, whispered answer, you immediately head out of the shop onto the pavement so you don’t drive your fellow-browsers utterly tonto with your inconsequential drivellings. Of course you don’t! Because absolutely no one nowadays possesses sufficient sensitivity to grasp the fact that trying to choose a book while listening to a one-sided conversation of mind-numbing banality is like trying to go to sleep while being dive-bombed by a mosquito . And, of course, it would be too much to expect the staff to ask these numbskulls to leave the shop (they’re probably too busy chatting loudly to colleagues to have noticed in any case).
About fifty years ago, people knew how to live together in society, because, wherever a balance was required, it was weighted in favour of the responsible, the well-behaved, and the considerate. Now that the children of the 1960s are in charge, the balance has been tipped inexorably in favour of the irresponsible, the badly-behaved and the inconsiderate.
The clearest sign of this is in the small things: the millions and millions of tiny social interactions that take place over the course of a day in this crowded little island. Every day, each of us has dozens of opportunities to drain the pleasure from other people’s lives: more and more us are eagerly grasping these opportunities to spread a little misery, to make other people’s lives just little bit worse. How we laughed a few years ago when we heard that the Swiss had rules about when you were allowed to mow your lawn in order to avoid spoiling your neighbours’ peace and quiet: given the increasing beastliness of our fellow citizens – their sheer lack of decorum, their ingrained solipsism – I imagine many of us gazing longingly at a society where the well-behaved majority are afforded some protection against the stinkers whose boorishness steadily chips away at the quality of their lives.
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