by Patrick Astill
There was a report earlier this week about how a postman had been injured in a snowball attack.
He was set upon by two grown men, who must have thought it was a great laugh.
But it was clearly an unsavoury event, because they pushed him off his bike first.
What was really going on here, though? Did the culprits imagine for a fleeting moment that they were enacting a scene from the Beano comic?
Was it on a par with knocking a policeman’s helmet off with an apple, as we saw in the old days?
Their failure to recognise that they had crossed the line shows that perhaps the days of “posties” and “coppers” are long gone, as are the days of childish fun.
For instance, how many kids own a peashooter these days? If they had a catapult would they be in line for a caution for possessing an offensive weapon?
The reality is that the boundaries are somewhat blurred.
My car was pelted with snowballs as I crawled along a snowy High Street this week, but it was some teenaged schoolkids taking pot shots at anything moving slowly enough for them to hit.
If there had been balls of ice involved, resulting in a broken window (as happened in another incident at a Grantham post office this week) perhaps I wouldn’t have been so touched by the winter wonderland feel of it all.
Of course kids want to play. It’s inevitable that older kids will indulge in horseplay. Somehow, fully-grown adults still manage to get involved in vandalism and criminal damage.
Who can teach them the difference? And how can they work out whether a prank is funny or upsetting?
My kids ambushed a neighbour this week with a hail of snowballs as he got out of his car.
He responded by sweeping all the snow from its roof on top of them with his arm as they stood there, bewildered.
Who should be handed the Asbo in that particular scenario?
And what about the men who attached the postman? A caution? An Asbo? Who knows what it would take to make them realise they got it wrong.
If the yobs needed support and rehabilitation from a probation officer – or perhaps punishment in the form of what used to be called community service – they would have to go through the court system at a high financial cost to us all.
But what a lot of fuss, and upset, for presumably what started out as an idea to have a bit of fun.
First published in the Lincolnshire Echo.
