I was slightly alarmed by the news that Harrow Council is recruiting 2,000 residents to join a network of ‘Neighbourhood Champions’. Their job will be to keep an eye out for evidence of graffiti, fly-tipping, littering and excessive noise, posting tip-offs on an anonymous website. What if the scheme is successful and other councils follow suit? Are we to become a nation of curtain-twitchers?
The reason I’m concerned is that I know from my own case how easy it is to fall into this role. I have already become a kind of self-appointed policeman in my local area and heaven help my neighbours if I’m given any sort of official recognition.
For instance, the other day I spotted a dog owner allowing a Yorkshire Terrier to defecate on the strip of pavement outside my house. I shot out of my front door like a cannon ball, demanding to know when the mess was going to be cleaned up and pointing out that it was an offence not to do so. I was absolutely fearless in my prosecutorial zeal — and would have been even if the offender hadn’t been a small Indian woman.
Dog mess is not the only thing that makes me boil over with civic rage. I have been known to run after small boys who discard sweetie wrappers on the pavement, warn the neighbours that if they don’t wind up their late-night barbecue I’m going to turn the hose on their guests, and order the local ‘recycling team’ to retrace their footsteps and pick up all the rubbish they’ve dropped in the course of collecting it. I am the Captain Mainwaring of Acton High Street.
I put it down to the fact that I’m now firmly ensconced in middle age. It’s not simply that I’m a homeowner with a large family and, as such, have a vested interest in keeping my area clean and safe. It’s also that I’ve become less tolerant of antisocial behaviour as I’ve got older. As a youth, I would happily chat away in the cinema, not giving a second thought to the people sitting beside me in the auditorium. Today, if someone so much as opens a bag of Minstrels I’ll scream at them to ‘Shut the f*** up’.
Caroline told me last week that I have become a ‘grumpy old man’ and I’m sure she’s right. My only comfort is that an Australian scientist has just discovered that being an irritable old git is actually good for you. According to Professor Joe Forgas of the University of New South Wales, gloominess breeds attentiveness and critical thinking. He assembled a group of volunteers and asked them to dwell on positive or negative experiences, designed to either lift their spirits or put them in a grump. He then asked them to participate in a series of tests, such as judging urban myths, and found that those in a bad mood were less credulous and made fewer mistakes than those in a good mood. In other words, you’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull a fast one on Victor Meldrew.
I fear that this research will have a disastrous impact on wannabe Neighbourhood Champions. We’re already convinced we’re right about everything, without a scientist adding to our arrogance by offering proof. What we need to be told is that constantly flying off the handle at the slightest provocation is bad for your health. I know from experience that the only thing likely to crowd out fantasies of murdering callow youths cycling on the pavement is the conviction that I’m dying of a fatal disease.
The two are connected, of course. The great anxiety of middle age is that our powers are waning; we can sense the vitality seeping out of us. At bottom, the reason men of a certain age become so angry with those who break the social compact is because they don’t want others to enjoy the freedoms they’ve given up. We can no longer drive at 60mph in a residential area with the windows down and the stereo at full blast, so why should anyone else be allowed to? It’s a mental condition to be pitied rather than indulged and it’s heartless of Harrow Council to try to take advantage of it. Forget about turning us into Neighbourhood Champions. We need to be confined in a safe place where we can do no harm.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
Comments