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HAVING regularly railed in this column against antisocial behaviour in the streets of our towns and cities, I feel it only fair to report evidence of the opposite when it occurs.

It is undeniable that, as the newscaster Martyn Lewis once so vigorously complained, the media can be seen to be obsessed with the negative aspect of human behaviour in its reporting, at the expense of stories that might be more positive.

Last week, two of my daughters spent the evening in Windsor.

The first that one of them knew she had lost her mobile phone was when we received a call from it made by a young man who had found it in a Windsor street.

Clearly a resourceful, as well as honest, young man he scrolled through the addresses, found one that said "Home" and rang it.

By chance, he lived in Cressex and arranged to meet my daughters there and returned the phone to them that evening.

Some might say that it is perhaps a sign of the times that this is worthy of comment; but it is and I welcome the opportunity to thank the young man again for going the extra mile beyond simply being a decent citizen in order to find the owner and return the phone, rather than just hand it in at the local police station.

It transpired that he had been in Windsor that evening to do football training, a fact that neatly fits another piece into the jigsaw of human behaviour.

Young people who are sufficiently motivated to pursue organised leisure activities and engage in sport or other group activities tend also to be precisely the kind of people who develop values and shared social responsibility.

And whatever detractors might claim, for young people who really want to get involved with something constructive, there is plenty of opportunity for most to do so.

You don't have to be Sergio Torres to join a local football team and you don't have to be Ian McKellen to join a local drama group.

The desire is all.

Opportunities are always less accessible to some than to others, of course, for a variety of reasons from location to cultural, but many more young people might surprise themselves and others if they took the many opportunities offered to them both in their schools and the wider local community.

Young gentleman in Cressex, I salute you.

1:52pm Friday 8th February 2008

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