What have I done now?

It’s an odd emotion, guilt.  People refrain from committing many misdemeanours for fear of either getting caught or that their own conscience will betray them.  Stealing a few sweets from a shop is no different to pinching a box of pens from your work place and they can both hang on your conscience.  This is truer when you are young, although parents had strange methods of dealing with misbehaviour.

My particular favourite parent-ism was when they’d threaten to do to you what you were planning to do to someone or something.  For example, you’d say something like, “I’m going to cook my tea” and they’d reply, “I’ll cook you in a minute” or “I’m going out” and they’d yell back, “I’ll going out you in a minute.” Apart from making no grammatical sense, you can only assume they are trying to mess with your head enough to confuse you into rethinking your intentions.  You could play this to your advantage if the offending parent was in a bad mood by saying something like, “I’m just going to make tea for”, to which the response would be, “I’ll make tea for you in a minute!”

Another favourite threat was, “I’ll knock you into the middle of next week”.  I was particularly keen for this to happen as I would have gotten my pocket money early and repeated beatings would have resulted in me being extremely well-off and a few years nearer my 18th birthday.  Turning up for school a wealthy twenty-four year old while all of my friends were still eight, would have been weird.

I’m 14 and I’ve got £45!!

Of course, parents shouldn't hit their children, which is wholly positive and therefore means alternative punishments have to be meted out to children for their misdemeanours.  Sending a child to its room no longer has the effect it did when I was young.  Invariably, every child has a DVD player, computer, games console and an exotic pet in their bedrooms these days.  Surely it makes more sense to send them to a different room in the house for a few hours - the bathroom for example.  Not a lot of entertainment in there apart from perhaps using a towel as a Toga and re-enacting the last days of Rome in a role play with themselves in the bathroom mirror.

They say if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.  In Dads’ cases it should be if it is broken, don’t try to fix it.  If something was broken, any child in the household would invariably get the blame for ‘fiddling’ with it.  It’s ok though because all Dads are trained electricians and carpenters; they all have sheds with tools in that they have no idea how to use and a tool box full of things that just go rusty through lack of use and a hole in the shed roof.  They take the cover off the broken electrical item, stare into it for a few moments then start jabbing around at the circuitry with a screwdriver and no agenda.  They then make noises that lead you to think they’ve found the problem, poke around for a bit longer, perhaps even remove something then put it back in, replacing the cover with a satisfied nod.  They plug it in, switch it on, wait - then say, ‘It’s broken’.      

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

It’s always awkward when you see someone you haven’t seen for years.  It’s normally someone from school or somewhere you used to work and you see them sitting on the bus or shopping in town.  It’s a situation you can’t escape – you've seen them and you realise that they've seen you too.  You could be brave and acknowledge them, hoping to recount tales of yore. Stories such as the time the chemistry teacher left the teaching lab for five minutes, returning to find the room stinking of gas and a first year on fire in the corner or the time your boss fell down the stairs and both her shoes flew off.

            The conversation invariably starts with a nervous, ‘So, what have you been up to?’, answered with either an indifferent, ‘Nothing much’ or an in depth account of the three divorces, five kids and eight jobs they've had in the 2 years since they last saw you.  Even more uncomfortable however, is the meeting in the shopping centre.  You’re power-walking to your favourite fast food outlet when out of the corner of your eye you see an ex-‘colleague’.  You have to stop, raise your eyebrows and look genuinely pleased to see them, though you made no effort to stay in touch after they were made redundant and you kept your job.  “Where are you working now?”, the conversation starts, “I’m not”, comes the inevitable reply followed by the tale of depravity.  The conversation also includes lots of fake smiling and nods of false surprise at the current situation they find themselves in.

"Who is he again? Oh, it's that boring idiot that used to... Hey! Lovely to see you again!"

            The worst of these meetings comes in the supermarket.  You’re sauntering up the poultry and game aisle, checking the sell-by dates and that ‘corn-fed’ actually means that the animal in question has been fed on cereal and not on bits that fell off the farmer’s feet, when the ghost from your past floats up the aisle towards you.  Much as you’d love to chat, you make the excuse that there are other trolleys trying to get past and you must move on, but it was wonderful to see them anyway.  You reach the end of the aisle and turn into the Oriental and Mediterranean sauces aisle, forgetting that the person you just exchanged pleasantries with would also be turning into this aisle from the other end. You stoop to study the Ragu until they pass, hoping they wouldn't try and speak to you again.  You then formulate a plan; you must either miss an aisle to ensure your respective journeys are out of kilter and so avoid another uncomfortable moment or hang back and hope people think you are health conscious, studying the nutritional value of the jar of Dolmio you've been staring at for the last five minutes.

"You're buying a Baguette, ey? Well, see you later!"

            Lastly you have that chance meeting with a person you only ever had one thing in common with, like the love of a sitcom which finished years ago but fails to go away due to the 'Gold' channel on Sky.  I knew such a person and the only thing we had in common was an English teacher at school with a strange accent.  Whenever we saw each other we’d go ‘You’re not allowed to do that’ in a Cornish-cum-Scottish accent and then giggle like twelve-year-olds; only because we were actually 12 at the time.  Six years later I saw him approaching from the opposite end of a corridor in a library.  Horrifically, we made eye contact at twenty metres.  We couldn’t maintain that eye contact for the full fifteen seconds until we met in the middle.  I had to feign interest in passing posters and missives pinned to the wall, my shoes, the ceiling tiles, the exquisite view of a brick wall out of the window, my shoes and the posters once more until we meet, grin, raise our eyebrows and say, “So, what have you been up to?”.     

Trolley rescue - the sixth emergency service

The police have a hard job; making the streets a safer place to walk, making sure cars aren’t parked in places where pushchairs can’t get past and seeming not to care when you have a crime committed against you.  The people of the Fire Service also have difficult jobs, as do Paramedics, the coast guard and the AA.  The sixth emergency service however, has things a little easier.  Whilst shopping in a local supermarket recently I noticed a telephone number on the handle of my trolley.  It instructed me to call should I witness a trolley that is 'lost'.  I assume it meant 'away from where it's supposed to be' rather than struggling with it's emotional identity.

On my jaunts to the surrounding countryside to where I live, I invariably see supermarket trolleys, wheels up in a small brook or on their side in a bush by the side of a disused railway track.  My mind doesn’t immediately wander to the pointless hooliganism that is the theft of these trolleys to be abandoned in such places but the sheer admiration of the guile and determination of these people to get the trolley so far away from its starting point without being seen.  I also find myself awestruck by the places these people can put the trolleys when they abandon them.  Up trees, down ravines – I once saw one over a give way sign.  It gave me an idea; just how far will Trolley Rescue go to recover a trolley? 

 

If this was a TV documentary, I’d place a trolley somewhere, ring the number and wait.  Throughout the programme, I’d place trolleys in increasingly precarious locations and situations.  The first I’d place just outside one of the trolley bays in the supermarket car park – just to see if they treat it as a crank call or a genuine cry for help.  The second I’d place on the pavement just outside the car park to see if they send their special ‘recovery vehicle’ or just the guy in the yellow reflect-o-coat.  (You can buy those coats on the high street.  All you need to do is print the logo of your choice on the back, ‘Security’, ‘Attendant’ or even ‘Whisperer of Destiny’ and you can just stand around telling people to do stuff; and they don’t question you – they just nod and do it, even if you’re just in a random street).

Trolley Resuce Motto - "We are ready to retrieve you"

 



The third I’d place in a quiet suburban road, the fourth would be placed on the grass in the middle of a busy motorway roundabout, the fifth in the lion enclosure at the zoo and the sixth up Mount Snowdon.  Surely there will be a point where the cost of recovering the trolley will outweigh the value – we just have to find that line.

I also wonder if they do get crank calls.  Trolley rescue, “My trousers are in next doors garden and they have a big dog!”

Button Moon - a bad example to Fathers everywhere