Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Three

The first of the ‘correction’ sessions was a Saturday, a joke lost on all those forced to attend. The movement had taken life of its own once it got started, these things do sometimes. I’m not proud of it, not now, but I was a ringleader at the time, a big man, a real hero.

I had mounted my soapbox, pounding on my chest, “These people must be stopped, they are wrong, they don’t share our proper English values.”

“We don’t need their kind round here,” someone shouted.

“Round ‘em up!” I cried and the mob bayed in agreement.

To avoid internment you had to know what you were saying wrong. It was too late to tell you. The core of the problem was our fault, we had never taken the time to improve them. We let it slide. And it came to this. The Corrections.

“What are you doing on the weekend?” the Grammarians questioned. Answer wrong and it was into the waiting van for ‘correction.’ Most never returned.

They would look up at me with pleading eyes. “Can I just aks what I did wrong?” they begged.

And that’s what we did to the people who said Satday.