The Hoods!

I’m sure that it’s something to do with living in a predominantly protestant country that makes the wearing of the hoodie so sinister and threatening. It’s the built in fear and distrust of those hooded figures from the Middle Ages who, in literature at least, are presented as unscrupulous, selfish and hypocritical: Monks!

It has to be said that for an English teacher the earliest reference to Monks that students of literature meet are probably in The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The Monk is ‘a manly man’ and a good hunter, but as a man of God, a disaster. He even rejects the precepts of the founder of his order and jokes, ‘lat Austyn have his swink to him reserved’ and lives his life as an affluent country man of leisure. He becomes the precursor of the eighteenth century rollicking country squire: local importance with an overriding interest in field sports, and not much else. A sort of upper class hoodlum.

I seem to remember reading that French Kings lived their lives in public – even their toilet (and I mean that quite literally) was in public. In great houses the aristocracy were used to the Great Unwashed peering in through the windows: the lesser breeds without the law could watch but never participate in the life of their betters. So, although the differences were clear, they were visible; you could always see what you couldn't live.

The rich now make sure that they are hidden from view: riches mean invisibility; if you can be seen you are obviously not wealthy enough. Even the aspiring middle classes are paranoid about their privacy (or their assumed privacy) and seek the Walled Enclosure to keep the masses away from their life style and they rest easy because the police are always there to protect the only class which actually fears them.

The wandering friars of the middle ages were hated by local priests who realised that their finances would be adversely affected by silver tongued holy fraudsters who could talk money away from parishioners and into their own pockets.

Nowadays wandering bands of dispossessed youth swagger their hooded way through areas of deprivation with a complete disregard for the straightened circumstances of their fellow citizens and are able to plunder from those least able to sustain the loss of property with easy negligence and an easy conscience. Like scheming individuals such as the holy friar in The Canterbury Tales, they ‘would have a farthing ere they went’ from anyone who appeared to be an available victim.

All of this has been occasioned by the mini drama which flowed past Paul Squared and I, as we attempted to repair the wind damage to the fence before the second (non) viewing (don't ask, because I am not strong enough to tell) which was supposed to take place tomorrow (but now won't.)

A hooded group of assorted miscreants sloped past us as we were working assiduously away to be followed in almost a parody of a fifties British comedy by a slightly overweight older person gesticulating and articulating spluttering threats with some considerable venom. He disappeared, only to reappear almost instantly in a white van which drove over the grass to follow the trail of the (obviously guilty) hoodies.

Amazingly the Hoodie Group reappeared, almost instantly, from the opposite direction to that which they had used to disappear and then dispersed with extreme alacrity when the Man of the White Van made a dramatic reappearance which encouraged two youths to cycle frantically into a hedge and also the general dispersal of the marauding pack.

Much three point turning by the Man of the White Van, noisy acceleration, and then silence for a while.

As a rather disturbing interlude a man walked slowly over the grass carrying a chain saw. Our imaginations lurched a little here: hoodies are naturally the personification of the principal of evil in the universe, yet to dismember them with a chain saw is perhaps a little bit of an overreaction. Possibly.

Much later a disreputable youth in yellow and white moving shiftily, disappeared down the gully, surreptitiously looking around the corner before scurrying across Ridgeway Road and melting slyly into the trees by the side of the school.

Then, eventually, the police; driving furiously in all directions.

Never dull in Rumney.

And we had put up a single panel in the fence. With this extreme achievement we felt that we were the living antithesis of the group of degenerates who had done, god knows what; gone, god knows where and been dealt with, god knows how.

But its nice speculating!