EXCUSES

You might wonder why all the snipes at teenagers – even my daughter tells me to get over it, that I can’t tar them all with the same brush and all that cliché, but I still think of them as stupid, dumb and dangerous-to-know. The thought that my beautiful grandchildren will be going there fills me with dread.

Number one son was the teenager from hell, so he started it. We lived in an area of Newcastle that was taken over by underclass hoodlums; these dregs of society had received disturbance money to leave their council properties during renovations. Their revolting offspring tormented and burgled the hell out of us; I think I had six burglaries in three years.

It got to the stage that before I went out I’d separate the computer: the screen went in the bath with towels and dressing gown draped over it; the keyboard in my knicker drawer; and printer behind the sofa. The little brats would be hanging around in the street so I’d slip out the back door and bash round the shops in a sweat, desperate to get home. They actually kicked doors in, in broad daylight; they’d belt through the houses and be out with arms full of electrical goods within minutes. If no-one had seen them they’d return for more…and if all was still quiet they’d send in the smaller kids for the smaller stuff!

And then there were the friends of my teenager, who wanted him to come out to play in the street riots. I told them to go away, that he was grounded. They sat on the wall outside and didn’t move. Of course I was incensed – the crazy woman who probably made the situation worse; I chucked my son’s clothes out of the window, hoping that this would stop him from running off with the rabble: it didn’t. His friends picked them up for him.

What do you do when your child seems to be taken-over by a cult? You’re helpless; left with insane choices. I had fantasies of murdering them; I had this image in my head of a brightly washed Sunday morning, quiet streets littered with the dead bodies of these teenagers, the silk of their Shell-suits flashing in the sun – I had poisoned their drugs or household food or doorstep milk…there were several scenarios.

I was a wreck for years then when my son was seventeen one of the older gangsters tried to kill him. They wrecked my flat, but that’s a whole other story.

So am I excused?