Crossing a Line

It was raining heavily again yesterday afternoon as I called in at the church to warn Rick the verger that I'd probably be late for Evening Prayer. He was there with Andy who was preparing for the Village Show today, setting out tables and labels, and young Jerzy who was practising on the organ. The church porch was occupied with a collection of youngsters, and a variety of litter which, with wearisome inevitability, they maintained was nothing to do with them. 

When I came back, Rick was wiping down the glass doors inside the porch. As well as the litter, the teenagers had abused Andy when he told them to be quiet and a visitor to the church, and managed to muster a surprising quantity of spit to mark the doors. They all disappeared when the police arrived, and went somewhere else (they seem to know the time of day the police are going to show up). I put up with litter, and I largely never manage to identify anyone responsible for particular incidents. But this little outburst shows such contempt for actual, definite people that I think I will bar everyone from the porch, no matter what the weather, until the school holidays are over. 

The current wave of misbehaviour around the village is the third I can remember since I arrived in Swanvale Halt. There was a troublesome group of young people in about 2012-13, some of whom came from the other side of Hornington; then another episode in 2016, I think, which was particularly knotty to deal with as the three (three!) teenage boys at the centre of it had not only been expelled from school but also from their Pupil Referral Units and for a few months the County Council seemed to have no idea what to do next, as though teachers at the PRUs had never had kids swear at them before. I don't know the present crowd of miscreants; there seems to be quite a disparate group, or number of groups. This cycle will probably develop in the same way as the previous ones, as the youngsters concerned go back to school, or get bored, or work out that their lives will actually be better and more worthwhile if they toe the social line rather than defy it. But it's a pain while it lasts.