Skipper

Rafael Behr in The Observer yesterday touched on a perennial social problem: youthful anti-social behaviour. He laments the 'premature onset of Victor Meldrewism among thirtysomethings'; how much more intense then is it in my own 'baby boomer' generation? [read on and you'll find out] Behr makes a shrewd point about privacy in that so many people act- with an apparently unthinking entitlement- in public as they would in private, and thus impinge upon that of others: speaking loudly on mobiles in public; listening to loud music; turning one's car into a mobile sound system and turning the volume up to 11 as they career around residential areas; swearing loudly and obscenely in public; and spitting on the pavement, especially when a gobbet of chewing gum is included for good measure.

Personally, what I find unsettling is the tendency to hang around looking menacing in my local town and city centres. This group usually comprises a group of young men who wear the obligatory drab black shell suit topped by the obligatory(often black) baseball cap. And they all seem to bear that kind of hollowed out feral look which not only intimidates but makes one feel acutely for the wasteland their lives most probably are. It is for this reason that myself, my partner, and most of our friends, avoid local town and city centres in the evening over the weekend as they are more often than not occupied by what seems an alien army of drunken, urinating, swearing and otherwise dangerously volatile young men. Looking any of them in the eye risks an unpleasant confrontation; conversations with my people of my age confirms this experience to be widespread.

Walking around then next day one in struck by the heaps of casually cast away food wrappers, the metal skeletons of bus shelters their bases crowded with crystaline piles of broken glass. Nothing, it seems can be left in a public space unprotected for fear of the mindless destructive violence which is so much a feature of our time. The civility and respect for others which was drummed into my generation, seems to have faded away totally. But, one sometimes hears, all modern societies have similar problems with their young males and always have. But do they? Tomorrow, I'll say something about that as well as try to explain why we have problems singular to our own society.