The role of drainpipes in social breakdown.

So then, blogity blogity blogity.

I hadn’t really intended to start a blog(ity) here but then, in a moment of drunken introspection and exaggeration, I did. And I can’t very well leave that as the only entry.

Let’s see then…I’m afraid the subject of this entry isn’t going to be as whimsical as it might sound. The other day a friend of mine got quite badly beaten up by some idiots with a drainpipe. Yes, a bloody drainpipe. I wasn’t there but it was about half past eight in the evening – still light – and these hoodlums attacked my friend and the people he was with. He had mostly cuts and bruises but one guy ended up with a broken rib or two. He says they were just walking along the pavement and I’ve absolutely no reason to doubt that.

I just don’t understand it. I’ve never been one of those people who goes on about the breakdown of society because, well, it seems to me that if you believe people then society has been breaking down forever so shouldn’t it be broken by now? What’s that quote? ‘Every generation thinks that it is more intelligent than the one before it and wiser than the one after it’ – it’s always seemed to me that every generation thinks that the kids of the day are worse and more violent than they used to be when social history seems to imply we’ve always been pretty violent. Petty crime, muggings, murders and so on were, if anything, more prevalent in much of our past.

But seriously, attacking someone with a drainpipe with no provocation. What, for kicks? People are just nasty, selfish, wretched little things some times. What’s weird is that those who did it are probably lovely to their mums and treat their friends well and all that but something about them makes them incapable of considering what they do to others with this kind of thing. You just see that kind of basic refusal to be considerate in all these little ways – not giving up a seat to an old lady on the bus, playing your music without headphones in a public place so everyone has to hear – tiny little things that people do when it wouldn’t put them out to just have some decency and manners, and I don’t get why. Obviously none of that is the same as the kind of assault my friend was the victim of but it just got me thinking when I heard about it.

I don’t believe people today are any worse than they used to be but, I don’t know, perhaps they have more opportunities to show their worse side in a thousand little ways these days? Perhaps it’s just more noticeable.

Mostly, I'm just angry for my friend being the unlucky one to get caught up in it this time.