Fen Fatale

I thought they were over - all those years of worry as each child in turn reached the age-of-the-car. As the dreaded honk outside the front door summoned them to roar off into the unknown, I was left sick with anxiety that they may never return. First it was assorted heaps of ageing hatchbacks that carried them away, to be upgraded into gutteral souped-up saloons, finally mutating into third rate sports cars or powerful status boosters - each one a potential threat against my beautiful children.

The long straight stretches of fen road lined by dykes look benign but are peppered with the odd chicane worthy of any Grand Prix, and end in acute bends round rectangular fields. Add rain, frost or mud to a second's loss of concentration and 'bang'.

I'd thought we'd all survived - only a few near misses and the odd write-off that bruised the ego as much as the body.


The frightening screech of burning rubber outside my house, which lies on a corner of the boy racer's nightly circuit through my Fenland city, isn't quite so immediate, for these youngsters are the next generation. My kids and their band of friends were now scattered to the winds, absorbed in careers, travelling, partners - grown-up pursuits.

But I'd become complacent.

I was with my daughter when the phone call came. One of the gang, home between travelling adventures, tempted back into boyhood by the familiar yet treacherous roads, had met his death in the violent impact of car and tree. I grieved for his parents, who too must have thought they'd escaped.
Instead there was one more promising life cut short, one more name to join the ever-growing roll of dead fenland youth.

What's the answer? To make teenage boys be sensible is against nature. Mix power and speed with the exuberance of youth, wind in the hair, the driving beat of the music, girls and mates to impress and you have a limitless arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

There's no Sassoon or Owen for this lost generation, no glory in their mangled bodies, only a despair that the carnage seems unstoppable.