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Sunday 27 January 2013

Insert witty play on a Shakespearean quote here

I had occasion a couple of weeks ago, to walk out of a room in disgust, halfway through a conversation. This happens more often than you might think, in my place of work, because the majority of my colleagues have some rather...unpleasant, I suppose is the word, attitudes when it comes to, let's see;

Race/Immigration
Women
Homosexuality
Children/Corporal Punishment

And so on. They're tits, basically.

The incident I'm talking about this time, was one involving 'fucking gypsies'; a favourite source of frenzied mutterings of late.

The thing is, I agreed that the people being complained about; the aforementioned 'fucking gypsies', were in the wrong in what they were doing. I had been quite irate with them myself. The difference though,was that I was angry over the behaviour of a small group of people who happened to be Travelers. My colleagues, I suspect, cared about the behaviour only so far as it allowed them the opportunity to have a rant. They were falling over themselves to top each others vile slurs. Which I won't repeat on here, cos this is a fuckin family blog, bitches!

What was this terrible behaviour, I don't hear you ask. Well, I shall tell you. It involved (horrible cliche alert, I'm sorry but it's what actually happened) horses. My place of work is directly opposite a large area of public grass, which is used by the kids to play games and the people of the adjacent estate as a dog toilet. Oftentimes, of  late, horses have begun to sprout up out of the ground there. (Not really, they're put there by their owners)

On this particular day, a group of young lads arrived on said area of grass to install two horses. Stakes were duly staked into the ground, ropes were duly tied to said duly staked stakes, and horses were duly tied to said duly tied ropes which had been attached to said duly staked stakes. Or that was the plan. What actually happened was that the horses bolted before being tied, ran across the main road and trotted, calm as you like, into our yard.

I won't go into too much detail about what happened next because it was essentially a Benny Hill sketch for almost two hours, but suffice it to say that the lads got on their mobile phones and pretty soon our yard was swarming with a large number of people attempting to corral a couple of horses who were, to my untrained eye at least, absolutely fucking terrified. They really didn't want to go with these lads.

After they had been caught and ropes tied to their necks, they were led out of the yard. One of them obviously knew the game was up and went quietly, guvnor, but the other; smaller, so I'm gonna assume younger, and therefore possibly more scared (I'm projecting human qualities here but fuck it, it's how it seemed to me) was having none of it. It braced with it's back legs and no amount of pulling on the rope or pushing on it's arse was shifting it.

Shall I tell you the ingenious method that was applied to get this horse moving? Don't answer that, because you might say no and that'll be awkward when I do it anyway. Here goes.

They drove into the back of it with a pick-up. They DROVE into a HORSE. Only slowly, mind you, so that's something, but they fucking drove into a horse with a pick-up truck. Come on!

After they got the horses out of the yard they herded them, still using the truck up the arse technique, across the car park of the supermarket next door, and onto the main road that leads to their camp; obviously having given up on the idea of putting them out to graze on the public land. And do you know what happened then? They lost control of the little one again, and it bolted.

 We watched from the canteen window as this horse ran up and down and across a busy main road for what seemed like forever, with these lads chasing after it. It would have been hilarious if not for the ever present threat of a  major traffic accident and the fact that when it was caught it wasn't going back to a particularly well cared for life.

So that's what happened. Were these people Travelers/'Fucking Gypsies?' Yes they were. Was I angry about their behaviour and treatment of those horses? Yes I was. But the two were not related. I know of a hell of a lot of people; more than I'd like; who have proved time and time again that they are not fit to own/care for animals, and it has nothing to do with their social/ethnic group. Some people are just tits.

And that's why I walked out of a conversation in disgust. Not because I didn't believe the people in question were in the wrong, but because I thought they were in the wrong for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they lived in a caravan.

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