Violation is corruptive and toxic.
To be or to feel to have been violated is to feel the entire seemingly unfair nature of the whole world to be against you, it’s to be helpless in a situation where being helpless is unacceptable.
Violation though comes in graduations, from small seemingly unsignificant events which disrupt our daily life in a way which we feel is unfair or unjust, cost us money that we should not have to pay or spend or time which is too valuable to give up for the nuisance or the insult of the violation that occurs.
This escalates up to the most significant and severe violations that you could possibly imagine such as the stuff that’s happening in Ukraine as family members watch their loved ones be executed for reasons which just do not apply to their day to day lives.
Just one small sense of that, of the lower end of the spectrum that happened last week in our work, in our work ‘home’.
On Monday evening around about 6pm travellers started to arrive in the car park adjacent to our site which is linked to a law firm just up the road.
That car park is ‘ripe’ for occupation, it has no security, no protection and a wide-open space which is ideal for settlement.
To watch this, happen is like watching the advance of a small garrison of troupes as the travellers rush as fast as possible, having identified a site to get the best pitch and to protect and secure the perimeter.
We were able to secure our site with lock-up bollards that we have and a car in front as they flash past us, occupying the site next door.
In a world and in a place where I want to be tolerant and inclusive and understanding of everybody’s circumstances, it’s hard to raise those virtues and values when you see what begins to happen next and I have some experience of this previously.
We locked our site and put security on with a car (our own car) in front of the entrance to stop anybody coming back on.
It was safe on Monday night and Tuesday night and Wednesday night but about 8.30pm on Thursday I got a phone call to say there was a caravan and three cars in our car park.
We really need that car park because we’re busy and both patients, delegates and staff expect to park there, the caravan and the cars were now taking up four or six of the spaces.
So, I parked my car beside the car of one of the travellers and Hayley parked hers close to them only for a woman to come out of the caravan and explain to Hayley, using some impressive industrial language, that if the cars were left there, they were liable to get scratched and dented by her 5 children playing on bikes.
The next thing some bailiffs arrive (although we’re weren’t entirely sure if they were bailiffs or not) and then a few minutes later a child of around about 9 years old started attacking the bailiffs van with a crowbar (encourage by someone who I think was his dad) as he jumped on the roof, smashed both wingmirrors off and smashed the windscreen.
This is happening in our car park.
The children from the caravan then start to try the door handles of our patient’s cars and all the other people working there and the travellers on the other site next door are pouring chemical toilets and bags of rubbish down in the culvert next to our site.
The police arrive and say they are unable to do anything because we have no proof of anything and leave and this begins to feel like a violation.
I have some small understanding of the travelling culture and the rights that this culture holds and are true to its nature.
This is my garden though; they’ve set up a caravan and are pouring rubbish and sewage in my garden.
We have a video of a 9/10-year-old smashing up a car with a crowbar and he stood right over there when the police arrived.
Aren’t we supposed to do something about that?
Aren’t there laws.
In the end it’s a champagne problem that Ed Clancy talks about.
Now they are gone, and the site will be cleared, we will put some more security in the ways of pneumatic bollards and concrete blocks and all sorts of things which should in theory make it harder for this to happen again.
But there has to be a better solution to this, and we haven’t found it yet.
And so, until a bigger problem passes across my door or my desk or through my family, this will still feel like some sort of violation.
Blog Post Number - 3052