Whoa??? What??? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek? Did someone really just say that? Have I been teleported into a meeting of the inner circle of the Conservative party? What the fuck is going on?

Laughing boy. That’s what.  LB, who has helped to shine a light on the workings of everyday life through his thoughts and actions (and the actions of others around him). The dude who has many (often unrecognised) strengths and qualities also has bigot tendencies.  He likes order and he likes things to be in the “right” order as he perceives it.  He’s classic fodder for Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger.  In LB’s world, everything has a place and sometimes, those places are very uncomfortable.  He used to ask anyone with an accent where they came from and the second question was always “When are you going back there?” Shudder. We began to over-anticipate public disruptions.  Once he started shouting “GO BACK! GO BACK!” at an Asian woman on the other side of the road. Turned out he was warning her not to cross because the lights were red.

For over a year he kept asking me; “Are you my mum, mum?”  It drove me crazy but ages later I realised that while he’d learned the category ‘mum’, he wasn’t sure if I was his ‘mum’. Cute really.  But “those bloody disableds”? I ain’t worked that out yet. Maybe that’s just bog standard bigotry.

Credits: Thanks to Jo Kidd for use of the photo.