The aliens live amongst us

“Ali­ens, mostly. Def­in­itely the ali­ens. Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, homo­sexu­als, les­bi­ans. I wouldn’t be too sure about the Muslims, though I don’t object to them myself, you under­stand. You just can’t be too care­ful, can you? But you can’t say I’m not fair, because an Amer­ican on the street would, well, you know. I just wouldn’t know what to say to them, passing the time of day and such. They would have a big car and insist on put­ting their let­ter­box on the lawn. Or a flag or something.

“People who listen to that loud rock ‘n’ roll music all day. Them too. Blang, blang, crash, doof, doof, doof. So aggress­ive. It can’t be good for them. Exotic pet own­ers — I mean own­ers of exotic pets, rather than people who are exotic and have, I don’t know, a little Cocker Span­iel or a tiny lap­dog or one of them Ger­man breeds. That’d be fine, as long as they weren’t too exotic. Oh me! I laugh at my own, I do. So, no, I just don’t want to live next door to a zebra, that’s all.

Then there’s the … I really don’t like … erm, it’s such a nasty phrase, but Gwen calls them the kiddie-fiddlers. They put them on a quiet street just like this after they get out, you know, and they give them social work­ers and jobs driv­ing minicabs. Mostly day runs, of course, tak­ing pen­sion­ers to the lunch­eon club and the shops. So I wouldn’t like a kiddie-fiddler here either, but that’s only nat­ural. That’s it, though. I can’t say I’d be minded against any­one else.

“Well, ter­ror­ists, of course. Obvi­ously. That goes without say­ing. You’ve got to keep your eyes open these days. For the ter­ror­ists. We can’t give into our fear of them by chan­ging our whole way of life — my mum called it the Blitz Spirit even though she lived out her days in a vil­lage in Dor­set, but then she’d always go off on one about that Mis­ter Hitler given half a chance. I told her that this was the mod­ern world, that we had to for­give and for­get. Dad drove an Audi, too.

“See, ter­ror­ists live in cells. That’s what it says on the news. I thought that was sort of funny. Cells! Should be in them, shouldn’t they? And these cells are on cul de sacs all over the coun­try. A cul de sac like this. And the quiet people beaver­ing away in their cells work at every­day jobs while plan­ning their atro­cit­ies. That’s another reason I don’t take minicabs any more. It’s not just because of the kiddie-fiddlers, but the ter­ror­ists too. So I walk down to the corner every morn­ing at 11, get what shop­ping I need, then come home and watch the street for any sus­pi­cious activ­ity. I find it espe­cially import­ant around half past three when the school emp­ties out, because that Quinn boy from num­ber 27 drops lit­ter on my bor­ders when he’s show­ing off to his noisy friends. So I tap on the kit­chen win­dow and glare at them, mouth­ing the words. I don’t say them, because I don’t viol­ate the Queen’s Eng­lish. I just, you know, glare and pre­tend to shout. It’s safer.

“Gwen and I don’t really social­ise. I sit here watch­ing her side of the cul de sac; she sits at her win­dow eat­ing her Ritz crack­ers and watch­ing mine, though she does get dis­trac­ted. We call ourselves Neigh­bour­hood Watch, though we never got the badges or the train­ing or noth­ing. We’re quite futur­istic though, you know. Because we don’t go for tea or things like that, we send these text mes­sages. She bought us both little Nokia thingies, and so we update each other on events that way. Here’s one: ‘new fam­ily no 18 reli­gious’. Gwen sent that yes­ter­day. Hope­fully she means Cath­olic or some­thing, not Jehovah’s Wit­nesses. It’s been quiet here, I’m pleased to say, so my last mes­sage was three days ago: ‘poss ter­ror­ist cell no 14 not gone shop­ping yet’. I felt a bit fool­ish when they had it delivered, later that after­noon. Waitrose, so they’re quite posh.

“I don’t tell Gwen about the ali­ens. Not even her. Because that’s my real worry, that the ali­ens live amongst us. Even ter­ror­ists, you know — until they do the sui­cide bomb­ings they’re quite nor­mal. Just keep them­selves to them­selves. Minicabs and secret mis­sions. But if ali­ens moved in and col­on­ised the cul de sac, I would just feel uneasy. A ter­ror­ist cell — well, you could com­plain about their ball com­ing over into your garden or if they were mak­ing the street unsightly by leav­ing their car up on bricks for a couple of weeks, because they would want to put it right quickly, wouldn’t they? So as not to attract atten­tion to them­selves. Exactly. But ali­ens just wouldn’t have those cus­toms. You wouldn’t know how they might react. It’s a worry, isn’t it? A real worry.”