Who’s watching you now? Is that really a blemish on the ceiling or is it really a secret camera recording your every move? How is it that sometimes you’re talking about someone and they call….or they pop by unexpectedly? How about when you’re picking your nose? How do you know 100% that nobody is watching you? Eh?? You can’t be entirely sure can you eh? I can see you looking now…you’re checking whether or not you are being watched aren’t you? Well…you are…I saw what you did….you dirty person….if your mum knew….she’d be ashamed!

Long ago, when men wore brightly coloured knitted jumpers, the South Yorkshire landscape was dotted with pit heads ; a pint of beer was around about 20p and I was just about to start school for the first time. My school was Much Woolton RC Primary School or St Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School depending on how common you were. My teacher was the delightful Mrs Oakley and she had a magic apple which she kept behind a floral patterned curtain. It was a magic apple because it would sit in the cupboard, empty, but at the end of the school day and providing we had been good, it would miraculously fill with dolly mixture which would then be distributed amongst the class as a reward. Magic apple was always good to me as I always got the green jelly sweets that nobody liked. I told Mrs Oakley how magic apple must have known I was really good to give me green jellies.

The reason I was so good probably boiled down to a passing remark made by my eldest brother. He told me that I had better be a good boy at school because he would be watching me. I believed this because he had told me previously that he had access to what some might say was a sinister network of hidden closed circuit TV cameras about the house which meant he could see everything. Of course it didn’t help my over active imagination when told by a priest that God was omnipotent and could see everything too. Worse, it was then revealed to me through the medium of a Tony Bennett Christmas album and I understood that Santa Claus, though coming to town with lots of goodies, was all seeing too. Santa could see me while I was sleeping and he knew when I was awake! Then, as if to rub salt in the wound, to make things worse for a child with an already over active imagination and the seeds of a future paranoia problem, I was then told that my deceased grandfather, whom I loved dearly, had gone to heaven where he could watch over me all day and make sure I was good for Jesus.

Talk about setting the scene for a psychological disaster!

But it did have a positive side and so, when I saw other children misbehaving, I wouldnt join in like the other kids did, I would just watch; comforted by the fact that their deceased relatives were watching them and telling Jesus how naughty the were for writing on the walls of the wendy house. I knew that they wouldnt be getting any christmas presents off Santa, and I sought comfort in the thought of them opening their brightly coloured gift wrapped presents to find a withered parsnip or a pile of dust. Justice would be done by the omnipotent beings.

Of course this ruse was soon to crumble and crack, when Wayne Gidman (the fat kid in the class year above who claimed to have pissed through a hole in the high up window of the boys toilet) tried to get my apple off me one break time and my brother asked me why I had been crying. I said to him he should know as he should have been watching his cameras and keeping an eye on me. To which he apologised and said that he couldn’t always watch the cameras but that I shouldnt get complacent as if I misbehaved HE WOULD KNOW.

As the years went on and I grew up I began to realise that our Carl was talking a load of poop. He didn’t have a network of cameras but he did have school friends that had brothers and sisters my age that went to my school too. I also realised that Santa Claus obviously needed spectacles as David Griffiths got a Speak and Spell toy (I wanted one too but never got one) even though he broke my ruler and he told lies about Duncan Nealey.As for God’s all seeing eye…Well that didn’t count for much in the Earthly sense. To reap any justice from old beardy I was going to have to put up with the injustice until I died. With these things deconstructing my paranoia you’d think it would have ended there……well you’d be wrong!

Some years later, when girls wore pointy shoulder pads and sticky up hair, Tommy Boyd presented Childrens ITV and Quattro was a popular mixed fruit beverage, I was on holiday with the school on the Isle of Man. I wasnt having the good time I was promised as the older kids were all picking on me and the kids my age couldnt didn’t care about me either. In an effort to reintegrate me into the group sessions the camp leaders organised a Scavenger Hunt. The idea was that we could run about Port St Mary (unaccompanied) and get various items from a list. I was well into it and starting to enjoy myself until we were outside a red painted hotel near the sea front. It was here that a shrill voice shouted across from the patio

“STEGZY GNOMEPANTS, I HOPE YOU’RE BEHAVING YOURSELF!”

the voice beckoned me and it soon became apparent that it was an elderly lady whom I later found out was called Mrs BRIERLEY! (this was nearly 20 years ago and I had no idea that I would be living in a place of the same name but that’s beside the fact). Mrs Brierley, or Ennis, was a bingo friend of my Nan. They regularly attended the over 60’s club together and she remembered me as a baby. I could never remember ever seeing the old bag before in my life, but I was a polite kid and well mannered, so I spoke to her and she told me she would tell my nan that she had seen me and that I was having a good time (I told her I wasnt and to tell my nan to come and get me).

On my return to Blighty, I recounted the story to my mum who said “Yes, that is why you should behave….because you never know who is watching you you know” . That was the final nail I think; I really had to be good because you really didn’t know who was watching you. Even people that your nan knew that knew you but you didn’t know them! OMG! I had no privacy, it was but a state of mind! Indeed, on many future occasions my mum would say to me “What were you doing in Belle Vale?” or “Why didn’t you pick up that can that you dropped outside Mrs Bond’s house?”, asking how she knew when she wasnt around recieved the answer “So and so saw you” or “Remember I know lots of people”.(This is true. My mum knows lots of people. It is truly shocking how many Christmas cards she sends out each year. I think the postage alone could pay off the national debt of a small African country and it has been known that the postman has sworn at my mum for the amount of cards she gets sometimes)

So I have to behave. I am a good lad. Always have been because I knew someone somewhere was watching me. Even things I do now are monitored, my internet use, my shopping habits, which buildings I enter, where I travel to, even what I watch on the telly. Walking down the street I pass countless CCTV camera that I can see but then you really have to think….what about the ones you can’t see? What about those monitoring devices you don’t know about? The metal strips in your paper money? genetically modified wasps and spiders? maybe your partner is really working for a covert government department sent to watch and monitor your behaviour? All have been mooted as possible means of monitoring and tracking behaviour. Yet still people misbehave.

But while I feel those invisible eyes burning at the back of my head, you’ll not find me doing something I shouldnt…just incase someone that knows my mum sees me doing it and snitches…..thats good enough for me I think. But you, yes…you!…..I’ve seen what you do when you’re home alone….thats disgusting….you should be ashamed 😉