Bullying an outsider

 

Recently, a number of countries have apologised publicly for actions committed in the past [1]. I have always found this odd, as there is no suggestion that the government of the contemporary country was about to repeat the evil of earlier generations, although there is always a risk. 

These acts made me think about whether I need to offer an apology for events in the past. Of course, I cannot do that on behalf of my country and, like all of us, there are a number of actions for which I should have apologised at, or near, the time. Not just on my own behalf, but also for others. One of these comes to mind over and over again. 

Richard Burton (not his real name) came to the Boys' Grammar School I attended during our second year. The school had an excellent academic record and behaviour, on the whole, was good. It was always presented as being a very desirable place to gain an education and this inevitably resulted in complacency. As always happens, there were hierarchies, and some boys were favoured both by masters and by their fellow students, but there was little nastiness. Richard was an outsider and had to find a way into the groups that had already formed and that is never easy. Perhaps he was ill-equipped to do so, for in a short period of time he was the victim of physical attacks and these escalated into what can only be described as violent assaults. If the masters knew about it, they did nothing to stop it, and those of us who spectated were swept up by the thrill of Richard getting another beating and, deep down, probably feeling grateful that it wasn't one of us that was being attacked. It lasted for years, on and off, and I don't know how he coped. 

We didn't know much about Richard’s background, but we did know that he was an outsider and that it was possible that he had moved to our town as a result of some adverse family circumstance. We didn't know, or care, about the reasons for the move, but the awful treatment meted out to him at school must have been misery enough, without any other problems that he had. I wonder what happened to Richard, and whether he was able to overcome the inevitable pain of it all? I still feel guilty for being an onlooker, carrying out my own little bit of taunting, and doing nothing to stop others. I knew the incessant bullying was very wrong and that’s what promotes my continuing sense of guilt. 

It all happened a long time ago (in the 1960s) and I’m sure that bullying is no longer a problem, as the complacency that resulted in such awful attacks must be a thing of the past. Perhaps the school, so proud of celebrating the achievements of its students, should join me in making a belated apology to Richard? But it's too late, isn't it – and, just as in apologies from national governments, what’s the point? 

[1] http://www.centrepeaceconflictstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/National_Apologies.pdf

P.S. The picture at the beginning of this post is of me, by the way, not Richard. It was taken from one of those school photographs that mean such a lot to some people. Fortunately, I was not bullied by my fellow students, only by some members of staff.

 

Memories of privet in Torbay

 

In an earlier blog post, I described the wonderful scent of honeysuckle and its reputation for inciting thoughts of love, especially in girls [1]. Another plant that flowers in July is privet, very common as a hedging plant and described by the Royal Horticultural Society as having “panicles of small, often unpleasantly scented white flowers” [2] (see above). This is a subjective judgement, of course, but most people would agree with the RHS, as they walk past flowering privet hedges. 

For me, the smell of privet flowers brings back a very strong childhood memory of trainspotting on summer Saturdays in Torbay. This is what I wrote in Walking with Gosse [3]:  

For me, the constant arrival of trains was exciting. Not because of the crowds of holidaymakers, that were just a blur, but for the chances of trainspotting and seeing locomotives from distant places far beyond Bristol. I don’t know why trainspotting was such a passion for me as a boy, but it was. Even today, the smell of privet flowers reminds me of happy walks through the local park to the railway station and the anticipation of gaining new entries in my Ian Allan Combined Volume. 

I was brought up in Paignton and, as a child, Bristol to me was in the far north. Large numbers of visitors swelled the local population during the summer months and an indication of the amount of holiday traffic is shown in the photograph below (taken from the excellent book Summer Saturdays in the West [4] and showing a typical scene at Torquay from August 1957, the time when I pressed up against the railings at Paignton railway station). On the left, we see a crowded platform of returning holidaymakers about to board their train home, while the opposite platform is empty and awaiting the next delivery of excited passengers coming to start their holiday by the sea. The small locomotive at the rear of the heavy train was needed to assist the train engine in tackling Torre bank and another of these “bankers”, having drifted back from Torre station, waits on the central line ready to buffer up to the rear of the next arrival from Paignton. Once past the bank, there was a clear passage to Newton Abbot, where the lines from Torquay joined those from Plymouth and Cornwall. Newton Abbot was a mecca for trainspotters in those days, as pilot engines were needed over the South Devon banks and the locomotive shed that provided them (code 83A) was adjacent to the station. There was always lots to see, and three years after the time mentioned in the quote above, I still made occasional trips up to Newton Abbot to spend a day trainspotting. They didn’t have the same spell as those of earlier days, perhaps because powerful diesels were starting to appear and, anyway, I was growing away from my childhood passion for collecting numbers. I think my Ian Allan Combined Volume was thrown away. 

The scent of privet doesn’t only evoke memories for people, it also attracts pollinating insects that allow fertilisation of the plant in return for the “gift” of nectar. This association evolved way before humans came on the scene, and privet is also used as a food plant by insects, including the privet hawk moth caterpillar (see below), with the dark berries produced in autumn providing food for birds. It is a successful hedging plant because of its vigorous growth and its ability to tolerate some loss of leaves; strategies that evolved to cope with attacks by insects and other animals. But back to privet flowers: “unpleasantly scented” they may be, but they are special for me. Isn’t it strange how smells, transient as they are, can have such a strong effect on the memory? 

(As an aside, it is also of note that privet has been used in folk medicine for centuries, as a means of reducing inflammation [5]. Studies continue to examine some of the component chemicals in leaves and this may lead to the development of new medicines [5,6].)

 

[1] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-beauty-of-honeysuckle.html 

[2] https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/10108/i-Ligustrum-vulgare-i/Details 

[3] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. e-book. 

[4] David StJohn Thomas and Simon Rocksborough Smith (1973) Summer Saturdays in the West. Newton Abbot, David & Charles. 

[5] Anna Macková, Pavel Mučaji, Ute Widowitz and Rudolf Bauer (2013) In vitro anti-inflammatory activity of Ligustrum vulgare extracts and their analytical characterization. Natural Products Communications 8: 1509-1512. 

[6] A. Pieroni, P. Pachaly, Y. Huang, B. Van Poel and A. J. Vlietinck (2000) Studies on anti-complementary activity of extracts and isolated flavones from Ligustrum vulgare and Phillyrea latifolia leaves (Oleaceae). Journal of Ethnopharmacology 70: 213-217.