As a child in the 60's money was tight but we weren't poor in that we went without anything - though we had to look after what we had, and if we broke something, that was it, we went without it until enough money was saved for a new one.
My mums favourite saying was 'soap and water costs nothing' which of course isn't true. But every night, to prove her point we were scrubbed and inspected to ensure no specks of dirt, imagined or otherwise remained.
At school there was a boy in my class who was - as I now now - undersized and underfed for his age. He always had a runny nose, dirty clothes and he smelled quite strongly.
Whenever we had to line up in two's, no one wanted to hold his hand, sit next to him in class, or invite him to join a game. I was one of the 'no-ones' because to the 6 year old me, he should have got washed every night then he would have had friends.
This boy lived in my street and one day news, awful news swept up the road from the top of the hill where he lived. He had run out into the road and had been hit by one of the very few cars in the street at that time. By the time he arrived at hospital, he was dead.
Suddenly everyone cared. People went to sit in his house to keep his mum company - my mum included. They took food, sent buckets of coal for a fire, had a whip round, and said out loud to everyone within earshot 'what a grand lad he'd been'. These were the same people that had whispered to each other behind their hands and over the garden fences about the state of him, but had never done anything about him, far less allow him into their homes or even give him a jam sandwich. Hypocrites.
He'd been undersized through hunger, unwashed and smelly because his mum was ill, and couldn't work, and his dad couldn't be bothered to work and took what little money that did come into the house for beer..
I remember afterwards looking at his empty chair in class and feeling what I now know to be shame. I was ashamed. I wished I had held his hand, and shared my breaktime biscuit that my mum gave me threepence a week for. I wished I had been his friend.
Derek. His name was Derek and I have thought about him often throughout my life. He taught me never to judge ever again. He taught me to care, always. He taught me a hell of a lesson at 6 years of age.
As an adult I have worked with children in school, many of whom were in his situation and worse. But this time and every time I did something about it, ranging from sorting out a breakfast from the school kitchen for a 7 year old, to, after seeing a mothers boyfriend strike her child, calling the police on him there and then, with his consequent arrest and charge, and giving evidence in court.
What have I learned? Just this - that 'Evil triumphs when good men and women do nothing'.