The world has gone slightly mad. It seems to be suffering from teenage angst. Politicians are deciding that there is a date from which we will never be able to say a made-up word again. It will be done and so using the word will become a thought crime. When I was a teenager I devoured dystopian fiction, horror books and read everything I could about the supernatural. Although, I knew the world was still full of Secret Garden and Little House on the Prairie I wanted to read about the very worst because I’d stepped out of my egocentric bubble and noticed a faint whiff of despair. The world seems to be acting out these novels of my teenage years. Soon, we will all know the temperature at which books burn.
My little town has also lost the plot. Yes, I know we have a nice new bookshop and a silo shop and it looks great from the outside, with a pretty estuary park, more historical buildings than seems possible and at least four choirs (a town that sings together wins together) but it is firmly in the grip of teenage angst.
At my Aunt and Uncle’s anniversary lunch my sister was telling someone about where we live.
“Yes, it’s lovely,” she said “But we did just have our first murder.”
The death of a young man walking down the High Street and being set upon by some other drunk young men looking for a fight was tragic but it wasn’t the first murder. It wasn’t even the first that started at that spot. In 1582, two shoemakers had a fist fight in Friars Mead, which I think is the same alley. They followed it up with a duel at dawn with pike staffs in the Heybridge rectory but the result was the same.
Then there was the famous murder in the cow barn of 1814. William Belsham had his head beaten in by William Seymore, a returning seaman, who then stole his silver pocket watch and chain, a pound note and 25 shillings.
Obviously, there was also the White House murders and after the ITV drama in the new year you will have as many opinions on it as the rest of the town.
About the time I moved here there was a big murder case going on. A body had been found in a concrete coffin at the back of a Turkish kebab shop. The body was that of the owner, Fezvi Demir and although two people confessed and were imprisoned the case remains ‘unsolved’ because the conviction was unsafe due to an unreliable pathologist. I remember the case at the time because the builder who had found the body had said that the place was in a terrible state. The electricity had been cut off and the meat in the freezers were rotten and contained maggots the size of alligators. (There are some things you read in your local paper that can never be forgotten.)
A town with so many murders will clearly have a ghost problem. Maldon is, apparently, one of the most haunted places and you could find out more by taking one of the ghost walks or visiting Beeleigh Abbey. However, in the true sprint of teenage angst our town is no longer happy to let these spirits roam free.
I saw this sign in the chip shop. Who you gonna call?
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