my stuff
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
what would you have done?
Sometimes I like to sit and marvel at the world (don’t worry, this ridiculous cheeriness I’m suffering from can’t go on forever, I’ll be back to my moaning old self soon enough, let me enjoy it for a while will you?) and really let my mind wander across the big things in life.
Like people. And how we all move around like one big organism, sometimes connecting with the people around us – loved ones, loathed ones, complete strangers – and at other times float through huge crowds, not connecting at all, not looking, not thinking and definitely not touching, but still, somehow being part of it all.
I am a bit of a lefty it has to be said, and I know that the attitude I have to people and society is due to a very lucky upbringing in a country that has little cause for me to be suspicious of young boys in hoodies or different coloured faces or men with rucksacks and so on. I believe that as I’m part of this huge, moving mass of bodies it is my duty to look after you and you and you and it is your duty, and yours and yours to look after me.
On Friday night, I was sitting on the bus to my friends’ house, off to feed their cat while they were away for the weekend. It’s the same bus route I take if I go to the gym so I was tranced out, looking at Leith Walk in the dark and watching all the people march home in a similar trance.
I realised I’d missed my stop because I’d been day dreaming (or night dreaming. Or early evening dreaming, whatever) and so I got up and went downstairs to the doors so I could get off at the next one.
As I was standing there and the bus was stopped at a light I noticed 3 men tussling on the street. It looked like 2 of them were play fighting with the third and they were all having a bit of fun. It was noted by my brain and then immediately, I started thinking about something else.
I got off at the stop and started to walk down the road and in time, caught up with the 3 men having a play fight. I don’t really know why, but something about it made me look more closely. I suppose at first I had seen them as 2 elder brothers messing with a younger brother but as I got closer I saw that the elder 2 were indeed grown men and the third was much smaller, of a different race to the other 2 and did not look like he was having fun – quite the contrary.
I kept walking, but at a much slower pace and started staring – I knew I was but because of my really relaxed, trancey state of mind previously it took a while for my brain to engage and as I stared, my brain started going through the facts. 2 grown men dragging 1 young and very small male down a busy street. The 2 men looked angry, the small one looked terrified. Each man had an arm and a leg, the boy looked like a bug being pulled apart. I was aware of all these people walking down the street, some looking and walking on.
I was about to do the same thing, I’d made decisions in my head by this stage – based on how they looked, what they were doing, their ages and yes, even the colour of their skin.
The boy was tiny, I started to walk and then thought ‘no this isn’t right’ so I said ‘what are you doing?’ to the men( who had stopped to get a better grip of the boy). Yes the wee one looked like a scally, but small teenage boys in Leith all look like scallys and they can’t ALL be (can they?), and this one in particular looked like a scally but a terrified one.
‘Shut up, mind your own business this has nothing to do with you’ one man shouted and that’s when I realised that this guy knew that he wasn’t doing right. I could have walked on but I stayed rooted to the spot. ‘Why are you dragging that boy down the street? Where are you taking him?’ at this point the kid roared out really loudly ‘please, Missus (yes, I am now of that age where I am a missus. Sad but true) help me, please I’m asthmatic and I cannae breath, I’ve no got my inhaler’, at this he sucked in a huge, rattling breath to illustrate his point.
‘I think you should let him go, he looks in real pain here’ I said and the other guy piped up ‘this is none of your business. He stole a mobile phone from our shop and we’re taking him back to sort it out’.
Again the boy screamed at me to help, my first reaction was to say ‘okay, this really is none of my business – he stole something from them and I need to get out of this situation now’, but instead I said ‘look, if he’s stolen something from you, you need to call the police so they can handle this – you can’t drag this boy down the street, you need to call the police’.
The 2 men were getting really angry at me, their eyes kept flitting to all of the people who were walking down the street – grown men included – who were ignoring what was going on till they got a safe distance down the street and stopped for a good eyeball at this very strange show down.
They really shouted at me to keep walking and started dragging the boy some more as a third man came along and looked me right in the eye and told me to keep moving. He flashed a mobile phone in my face and told me that was the phone the boy had stolen and they were taking him back to the shop. Now I don’t know, maybe they were going to take him back to the shop to call the police, but I just couldn’t work out what the best course of action was to take. If I left him, who knows what they were going to do to him? My decision was already made from the minute I asked them what they were doing so I said ‘look, I’m sorry but if you don’t stop this I’m going to call the police myself’ and brought out my own phone.
They told me to fuck off and again tried to drag the boy. I reached out for him and FINALLY someone came to help me. Another girl, the same age as me (if not younger), all these men, all these women and teenagers or all ages had walked past but it took another me to come along and help out. Thanks guys! She grabbed the boy and said ‘you can’t treat him like this, you have to call the police - this will look really bad for you if you don’t stop hurting him’ and as we both pulled the boy (god we must have looked mental) the third guy took a few steps back and then ran at all of us and gave the boy a swift (and very strong) kick to the ribs.
Then all 3 of them walked off, leaving us with this gasping, crying, pure white scally with bleeding lips (god knows what they’d done to him before I’d found them) who was slipping in and out of consciousness.
Between the 2 of us, me and this girl got him comfortable, warmed him up, got him some water (which we later discovered was a Very Bad Thing), called an ambulance, called his mum and kept him conscious by asking him about his pets and what he got for Christmas and what girls he fancied at school.
It was absolutely mental. The 2 of us worked like we’d known each other for years, immediately working on our strengths and working like we did this kind of thing every day.
When we were sat on the ground with him, holding his hand and talking to him – THAT’S when grown men came over to ask if we needed help. Even the ones that had walked past but kept at a safe distance had the nerve to come and ask if we needed a hand now – cowards. Eventually, the ambulance came and the boy was taken in to be checked over and given an inhaler and all that kind of thing. I called his mum again to let her know what was happening and to tell her if she needed my help with this I was happy to stay involved.
Then me and the girl (I never did find out her name) looked at each other in a completely different way from before. She said ‘mental what Leith Walk brings eh?’ and I said ‘I know, I need a stiff drink now’ and she said ‘well, thanks for that. I’m glad you were there’ and I said ‘thanks for coming and helping me, I don’t know what I’d have done without you’ and we gave each other a very stiff and British cuddle and off she went.
I stood there in the street with the biting wind hurtling into me, my cheeks stinging with the cold wondering what on earth to do now. My adrenaline had subsided and I realised I was freezing and starving and bursting for the loo. I wanted someone there to talk to, to give me a big cuddle and say ‘fuck are you alright wee one?’ and to take me somewhere and give me something warm to drink and talk over the details of what happened.
Instead I went to an empty flat to feed a fat cat, then went home to my own empty flat to feed my own cat.
For the rest of the night I couldn’t relax (Bandito had gone up north with his friends to go snowboarding) and I had a huge knot in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t believe that one minute I’d been completely and utterly immersed in something so huge, for I don’t know, 10, 15 minutes and then the next, I was sitting on my own in my living room, eating toast and wondering what to do with myself.
So connected one minute, so unconnected the next.
Eventually, my friend The Loop came round to see me to make sure I was alright. She brought wine and fags (bad I know) and just having someone with me, telling me I was right to get involved and making me feel part of my own universe again made me feel much calmer.
Connected once again to the things I’m familiar with, the things that are my life and my world.
I spoke to the boys mum the next day, and the boy came on the phone to thank me for helping. He told me that loads of folk had watched him get dragged from the top of the street (which is quite some distance to the point where I got involved) and that he thought they were going to beat him up in the shop. He didn’t get taken to hospital in the end, but he has 3 broken ribs and won’t be going to school for a bit.
Insane. One of my friends said I might have saved that boys life (and the dramatic side of me really likes that idea) but I don’t think so. Surely not. Not in Edinburgh?
So it was a very dramatic end to my working week. Now I’ve had some time to think about it, ponder over the little details I know I’d have done the same thing if I came across the same situation right now. Because from a safe distance, I know that I still hold onto my belief that its my job as a human being to look out for other human beings as much as I physically can.
Especially terrified looking 14 year old scally-wags who can’t breath and call me Missus.
10:42 pm - 28 January 2007
