Picking out the city's rotting apples

Pausing only to adjust the tension on my gunbelt, I was about to lift the latch on the back door when my eye caught an unfamiliar shape in the front room.

It certainly wasn't my father - whose fearsome, formidable outline was firmly etched into my brain - neither was it Uncle Norman on one of his frequent visits to the village.

There was nothing familiar about this person at all. The mystery figure was dressed in what appeared to be a uniform.

Across the room, in shadow, my parents were apparently listening in mute deference. Mother appeared to have her head in her hands.

Only seconds had elapsed, yet it seemed like an age. Then the penny dropped. The refraction caused by the glass and bright sunshine had prevented me from seeing clearly into the room.

But now I could see. The stranger was a policeman.

Gulp. A policeman. Blooming heck - what was a rozzer doing in our house?

I walked through the kitchen into the room. All I could hear was the theme from High Noon. The three adults stopped talking and looked up. The policeman eyeballed me through gimlet I-know-your-game-sonny-boy eyes.

It was my father who broke the silence. "PC Foster has come round to talk to us, John. He says you've been stealing apples from Mrs Burt's orchard. That's theft - and you could be in deep trouble."

It wasn't just the scrumping, either. I'd been riding round and round the village green with Mick Lucas and a few residents were fed up with it.

Mick saw PC Foster first and we high-tailed it in best frontier style. The next few hours were spent hidden in the deep ditch by the white palings.

If caught, we would be jailed until we were 16, and then hanged, said Mick. I wept bitter tears as I pondered on my young life cut short by the noose. Why me? It was all so unfair.

The year was 1959. I was aged 10.

Back to the front room. I soon received what I can only term as being the biggest telling-off - there is another term but this is a family newspaper - and within five minutes I had been reduced to a husk.

"There will be no more stealing apples, PC Foster. And I won't annoy the people who live down by the Green, sir. I promise. I am very sorry for what I have done..."

The world is a very different place today compared with how it was in the innocent 1950s. Well, it is in Warndon, at least.

Warndon, Worcester. Judging by some of the antics on this city estate, one would be forgiven for thinking that law and order has completely broken down of late.

But there are, however, some encouraging signs that the war on Sid Yobbo and his revolting little mates is gradually being won.

At a meeting called to address an escalating problem with anti-social behaviour, the police sent a clear message to the public to stand up and be counted.

Hundreds of residents turned out in Shap Drive to hear how schools, councillors and community workers were pooling resources to tackle youth problems.

The meeting had been arranged after 800 angry residents signed a petition complaining about a breakdown in behaviour around Cranham Drive.

They called for more police action - and, to their credit, the police have risen to the occasion.

As reported in this newspaper, the unprecedented move to bring a new police office into the shop frontages of Cranham Drive was a major step in meeting the situation head-on.

ASBOs - anti-social behaviour orders - are all very well, and may put a brake on some of these louts, but the answer always lay in the time-honoured method of having a copper on the spot.

And that is what we have in Warndon. Nowadays, it is known as multi-agency involvement, but never mind the jargon, the important thing is that action is rapidly gathering pace.

In fact, there's just one more grouping to welcome to the proceedings. And that is the parents of the yobs concerned.

Let me ask a question of these people. It's seven o'clock in the evening. Where is your teenage son or daughter? She/he said something about spending the evening watching videos round at Craig's place, but is that the truth?

Do you remember telling a similar story to your parents, just as your mate's mum and dad thought he was coming round to visit your house? There are no new plots.

And what about recognition? Is society so fragmented that no one knows the children and teenagers on the street.

And can it be true that if that is not the case, then such is the level of fear that no one has the courage to step forward and give information?

Happily, it would appear that the tide is now turning.

But the only way to really nip this problem in the bud is for parents to play their proper role. Sadly, across Britain there are large numbers of dysfunctional families who cannot grasp the obligations of citizenship.

There is no one to teach them right from wrong. The churches have failed, the schools have conducted one social experiment too many, and most politicians are not interested.

It is up to the ordinary man and woman to claim back the streets. Yet it can be done...

All this seems such a long way from the two-street village in north Warwickshire where a 10-year-old lad was once nicked by the local bobby for scrumping.

I seem to remember that long, hot summer of 1959 resulted in some particularly handsome apples. And they certainly tasted good, greedily eaten in the hollow tree at the top of the paddock, even if the sweetness was destined to turn sour.

Yet it is not the piquancy of those Cox's Orange Pippins that lingers in my memory, rather the unholy vision of PC Foster, all beer gut and red face, sat on the sofa in our front room and giving me the rollicking of my life.

That's what I remember.

And it will never be erased from my mind. For I have no doubt whatsoever that if a few more tearaways were given the third-degree by a modern equivalent or that redoubtable village bobby of the 1950s, then there would certainly be fewer yobbos wreaking such havoc on our streets today.