An Unpleasant Encounter

5/12/07

An unpleasant encounter with Ross McAteer's mother in the Drumfeld Spar. It's not the first occasion on which I've been taken to task about an entry in the Glossary of Villainy included on my website. Karen Balsillie-Ure was equally incensed by her son's inclusion. "He's eight years old!" she fumed, as if that had any bearing on his potential for causing unhappiness. Regardless of a child's age, though, mothers are invariably incapable of making a dispassionate analysis of his or her behaviour. My own mother, as I tried to explain to Mrs McAteer, continued to insist that Spencer was sensitive and talented for years after he'd provided conclusive evidence to the contrary. "I'm not interested in your brother," snapped Mrs McAteer, prodding me in the chest, "You're the one who should have been taken in hand!" For the next fifteen minutes we talked at cross purposes, with Mrs McAteer making wild allegations of harassment stretching back over twenty years while I concentrated on specific instances of Ross's criminal delinquency. Anyone accepting money to design a website, I reminded her, and then not doing so is a thief who shouldn't be surprised to find himself categorised with other knaves. Mrs McAteer predictably regurgitated the unspecified 'personal problems' presented at the time of the original offence as mitigating factors. As I often remind Christine's depressives, we all experience periods of darkness. A man's calibre is determined by the manner in which he endures them. In any case, Ross's so-called problems weren't sufficiently overwhelming to prevent him from working on web-sites dedicated to Grange Hill and his black labrador Wilson. (While the latter of these was purportedly Wilson's own work, no great investigative skill was required to deduce the brain of McAteer behind its construction.) 

 

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