Postscript to a riot

Funny postscript to last week's Youth Club events. Well, it's funny to me, anyway! I have a little (mostly unwanted) sideline in fixing people's computers and such. So, about 3 weeks ago I got a call from one of the kid's mothers, who used to volunteer at the club, saying she was getting a new laptop soon and could I set up a wireless network. Then I had to phone her last week to say her son had been suspended from the club! Turns out she'd also buggered the CD drive on the main computer. So yesterday I went to her house, and set about my work. After a 20-minute boot-up on the main computer I surmised (rightly) that it was riddled with malware, so I settled in for a long haul of system scrubbing.

While I was sitting there, her son came trotting in from football practice. And he took one look at me, and nearly fainted on the spot. I have very rarely seen such a clear and overt "oh, shit" look, and never from him! Normally, nothing fazes him, he's a ginger, cocky, mischeivous git. And then to make it even better, 3 brothers who were also banned ran in the door and bounced off of him. Oooh, it was lovely, I had a whole 'Usual Suspects' row of "oh, shit" looks right in front of me! It was such a shame to have to explain that I was off duty and only here to fix the computer.

On the down side, I didn't expect to spend 5 hours of my bank holiday weekend Saturday working on someone else's computer. Total pay for 5 hours - one bottle of wine, to be paid later.

I'm a mug.

I did find out the name of the youth who got stabbed on Friday. We knew there had been a stabbing, that much got around as soon as the Air Ambulance landed in the local park. Surprise, surprise, it was a member of one of the local gangs. Luckily this one survived. Unfortunately, the word is he's refusing to tell the police who did it so he can go and 'get them' back when he gets out.

This is why we try to catch them early - and why we don't permanently ban little gits like the ones above. If we can even take some of them off the streets and give them better habits before they hit gang age, all the crap we have to deal with is worth it.