Childhood Traduced


     I walked down the length of Roman Road until I arrived at Bethnal Green tube station. The final few blocks of the road are grim and there is much evidence of bad municipal decisions on 'brightening up' the soulless tower blocks and estates that crowd up towards Cambridge Hill Road, as if trying to flee to better regions. In a concrete common area, surrounded by one such estate, a brittle-looking metal statue of an adolescent, of indeterminate sex, and its dog, straddled a trickling fountain; it made me think of a bidet. 
     I turned right into Cambridge Hill Road and headed towards the V&A's Museum of Childhood. It is housed in a grim Victorian warehouse. I heard screams as I neared the big 1960's glass entrance doors. As I pushed these open the screams became deafening. In the foyer a sullen young girl in a black uniform sat on a stool at the next doorway. I smiled at her as I entered and received no response whatever. The screams were emanating from the hundreds of children and their mothers who were running riot throughout the enormous single room that is the museum. Exhibits were presented around the edges of the room on several mezzanine layers. I steeled myself and climbed a ramp to the first of these levels. All of the objects have been tossed haphazardly into big glass exhibit cases, with no care or love. The lighting is terrible, barely passing down through the top glass shelves, so that the items that have been thrown on the bottom of the cases can barely be distinguished: is it a doll? or a teddy bear? Or a Mechano set? Case after case after case of dingy, unmemorable objects, poorly labelled with only the most rudimentary information, if at all, as though nobody thought it worth the trouble of writing an historical perspective for the historical objects. It resembled a down-at-heel charity shop. It was as if the 'curators' had taken all the joy, wonder and magic of childhood and stunned it into a coma with a big mallet of indifference. Mind you, that being said, after fifteen minutes in the gloomy hall (which was all I could bear), suffering the ceaseless shrieks, screams and shouts of the stamping, yelling, puling and puking brats who swarmed around me at every turn, I found myself also longing for a mallet. I stepped out onto busy Cambridge Hill Road, my ears ringing, and set off through the rain towards home. 
    Two middle-aged skinheads with tattooed necks and hands stood in a doorway, out of the downpour. As I hurried past them one hawked and spat loudly behind me. The other one said something that sounded like "Jibby jibby cratchit". It made me think of a nonsense playground rhyme.
    Nearer home, I went into a pub. Three people in their late-twenties - a girl and two boys - sat at a table playing a game in which coloured counters were dropped into an upright plastic frame (some sort of noughts and crosses-type affair). Their raucous whoops and yells at their various victories and defeats set my teeth on edge. 

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