Hate and Fear.

The bar fly was ordering another pint of Adnams and pointed an accusing finger at me. Oh God, I thought, here we go again. My friend and I had been discussing the Cuts' effects on the disabled, and the intelligence, sympathy and and understanding of his 87 years  contrasted vividly with how venomously the much younger  ‘Andy’ had spat the words. A nasty period of depression (I am a rapid cycling manic depressive) had lasted for a few days and as you do when you have 'flu, I'd  stayed in. When I got better I felt like getting out of the house and having a drink with a mate...nothing wrong with that, you might think.

The pub's a good one, to my mind one of the best in Maldon. Its earliest parts are from the 1340's. A bit of a mind-bender that it's walls has seen Agincourt, the Wars of the Roses. The Reformation and the Civil War. Besides that length of time my thirty years of being an on and off regular is of course, small beer (ho-ho). Nonetheless one gets attached to these things, so verbal slap in the face at the bar can make you feel a bit unwelcome.  

Seeing that I was upset, my friend Rachel went to see how others had reacted to the incident. She told me they tried to help by dismissing Andy as merely a stupid man:

"Tell him not to let it upset him."

''He gets grumpy with everyone! I know Chris is ill, but I think he's over-reacting.''

"Would it be better if he found another local?"   

What rubbish. Even our most unpleasant regulars wouldn't launch a similar blast of hatred at my friend Julia. Nor would the landlord accept it if they did. At least I hope not. She's a paraplegic who for many years ran our local education centre for the disabled. I taught there for a couple of years on Supported Permitted Work. Julia's a feisty woman, and I began to ask myself what she would do in the circumstances. Apparently Andy thinks it's OK for her to go to the boozer because she is in a wheelchair. But not me with my invisible disability.    

Acting on a whim I rang the Old Bill to see if there was anything they had to say about the matter. I was very surprised. Here's what the police officer told me. The law says if anyone has a go at you because of your disability so that you feel  'Alarmed, distressed or harassed,'  then it counts as a hate crime. Full stop. Notice how the emphasis is on how you felt. The police want my incident reported, and the penalties can be severe. Apparently it's up to me to decide whether I want to take it further, but they are getting pretty hot on the business and want me to go in and talk to them about it anyway.    

So far so good. But we all have to live in communities. Do I then take things further? Will I be ostracised and attacked again? Will it make things worse rather than better? Would it be any easier in a city?

We often say that the prejudice against people with with mental illnesses is largely caused by fear and ignorance. What we fail to take account of is what Bertrand Russell called 'the cruelty that lurks in the average human nature.' It's all very well to sit here writing blogs and books and launching them out into the cosy anonymity of cyberspace. But within our small town, people like Andy can make things very difficult, and I am becoming more of a recluse than I should like.

And that's certainly not because Andy, the bully who once sat at the back of the class now grown up, is afraid.  

It's because I am.