Our journey through this world is a fascinating one, giving us lessons in life every day. In all my years I have discovered that it is absolutely certain that if you do bad things, bad things happen to you. For every bad thing I have ever done, karma has arrived to give me ten times worth of misery. In simple terms what goes around definitely comes around. So now I try very hard never to step across that line, treating everyone as I would wish to be treated myself, gaining friends across the world.
Yet when I was small, my first lesson was a bloody one. In the infants and junior schools of Atkinson Road, Benwell I must admit to being a bit of a bully. Forcing smaller kids to do what I wanted, a little spoiled brat. Then as soon as I went up to ‘the big’ school, when instead of being the biggest kids in school, suddenly we were the littlest. All of the big brothers of those kids I’d bullied came to be and knocked seven bells out of me. On at least a dozen occasions I would be going home with black eyes, bloody nose, split lip and scabs like pizzas on my elbows and knees. Since then I have gone completely the other way, and karma is my friend.
Once just after leaving school a thug from one of the lower forms called Donnelly saw me walking to a friend’s house in Scotswood. He ran over wanting to fight me, there was no reason other than I was from tribal Benwell and he was from Scotswood. I know I could have chinned him, and he really got me close to doing it. He called me stupid names, I’m ginger and have heard them all, then he pushed me, then as I walked away he spat on the back of my jacket. Oh, that second I was within a flies leg of smacking him. Yet karma did it for me. I kept walking, knowing a damp cloth could right the wrong done to me. Just then I heard a bang, a shriek and spun around. Donnelly walking backwards whilst slagging me off, had stepped out onto Whickham View a car mirror had clipped him knocking him down onto the path. I ran to help him up, seeing his brow was starting to swell like the brow of a Klingon in Star Trek. The driver didn’t hang around, calling him a ‘gormless bugger’ before driving off.
On other occasions, life will give you a surprise. The night before on radio someone had called in my nightly radio talk show about the man who had burgled her house, as earlier that day they had been imprisoned for five months. I declared that in my opinion that was not nearly enough. The guy had trashed the home of a single mum with two little girls, taking all they had. Due to their situation they had no house insurance, so the listeners and I had teamed up to help them out. Offers of televisions, toys for the children, bikes from a local shop, a joiner offered to repair and secure the property, it was a miracle, and the righting of a great wrong.
The following day I went into work even earlier to do a bit of shopping. It was around Christmas time and I was walking through Eldon Square Shopping Centre when one of the bigger blokes selling Christmas paper called me over. He said “You Alan Robson?” I nodded and he got right up in my face. “Last night you called a burglar a scumbag who should rot in prison for five years?”. “Yes I did” I answered, pointless denying it. This heavy-set lad shouted “Well that ‘scumbag’ as you called him is my baby brother!”. I was not sure what he wanted but about thirty or forty people were gathering to watch the ginger bloke take a slapping. So I said “Imagine you get home tonight and found somebody had broken into your house, taken all your things, even your little baby’s toys….what would you call them?”. He spluttered “I’d kick his effing head in the bastard!”. “That’s why your brother is a scumbag and I hope he is rotting in prison!”, then thought it best to walk away. I walked up the rise, near the back door of Marks & Spencer’s, down the metal stairs taking you out of Eldon Square towards Percy Street. At that moment I heard someone heavy running after me, clanging down those iron stairs. I knew then that I had two choices, either to run or to swing around, hit him as hard as I could, then run. I had left it too late to just leg it, so I was winding up to turn and hit him, when as I spun around (trying to be a ginger Bruce Lee….but with the speed of Stan Lee) the chunky fellow handed me a bag of Christmas paper, decorations and party poppers adding “Merry Christmas mate!”. I could not have been more shocked, or relieved. No one wants to spend Christmas in hospital.