Free May Contain Nuts by John O'Farrell Page B

the split second became several seconds. I looked round and they had continued past me, walking at the same pace, still several feet apart, laughing and joking, and I saw in an instant that despite one of them being the height of a giant redwood, they were just a couple of kids walking down the street, not going anywhere in particular, but not the slightest bit interested in me.
    I am scared of black teenage boys . There, I’ve said it. I, Alice Chaplin, am scared of black teenage boys . Is that a racist thing to say? I think it probably is. I never considered myself a racist. Racists are shaven-headed football supporters with tattoos and bulldogs and BNP posters in the window, and you don’t get many of those in Oaken Avenue. Whereas I sign up to the generally accepted moral viewpoint that racism is A Bad Thing . Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King? Good people , definitely. The Ku Klux Klan? Bad people , very bad; if ever I met someone with a pointy white hood burning a cross I would think worse of them, no question about it. But black teenage boys? Well, I’m sorry, but either I lie or I say ‘scary people’ –that’s just my honest reaction. Maybe when they were fourteen, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King hung about with their hoods up at the bottom of Oaken Avenue on bicycles that looked as if they didn’t originally belong to them. Maybe Trevor McDonald began his interest in journalism by writing illegible graffiti on the side of railway bridges. Maybe those black teenage boys who don’t ever seem to be in school and leave half-eaten Big Macs on underground trains will grow up to be respected newsreaders or great leaders giving moving speeches about freedom or whatever, but in the meantime I cannot be a hypocrite and pretend that I do not feel alienated from, threatened by and simply scared of black teenage boys.
    My reaction is, of course, based upon the fear that a black teenage youth might try to rob me. That if I attempted to edge my way between the phalanx of pushbikes blocking the shadowy pavement, one of them might grab my handbag and cycle off to some concrete hideout where he’d feverishly empty out the contents, wildly estimating how much easy cash he might get for a pocket umbrella, a small bottle of Clarins Eau Dynamisante and a couple of battered old Lil-lets. And even if the police were to catch him, everyone knows you never get the tampons back. Could any insurance payment ever replace their full sentimental value? Would I ever find another pocket umbrella like that one with two broken spokes that cost £4.99 from Boots?
    If it is not the material loss that would bother me, why am I so scared? I suppose it is the thought of so much naked hostility being directed towards me, the idea of another human being showing me that much hateful contempt that I find so terrifying. This fear is not based on any personal experience. I have never been assaulted, robbed or even bothered by a black teenager. Ihave suffered more violence from old ladies elbowing me on buses, but I don’t break out into a sweat when I see a pensioner coming along in a little electric buggy because I think they might be planning a drive-by shooting.
    I suppose I’m actually scared of white teenage boys as well, at least the pasty hooded variety that ride bicycles on the pavement at night with no lights on and look like they eat only crisps for breakfast. Why can’t criminal youths be like they were in the old days? All rosy-cheeked and tousle-haired and singing ‘Consider Yourself’ while dancing in formation behind Ron Moody? I can’t imagine any teenage muggers these days cheekily helping themselves to an apple off the basket on the head of a tap-dancing Covent Garden porter. Mind you, my own kids wouldn’t fancy the apple much either – they’d have to stop all the singing and dancing while I peeled and sliced it for them and mixed it up with some organic