It's For Real

Sounds like an advertising slogan, no?

I'm just talking about the England I came home to, yeah yeah whinging again - I promise (tho' I often break my promises) that this'll be the last time I mention it.

My mother's car had eggs thrown over it twice last week - not by birds, but by teenagers. Don't these kids know it's not even properly Spring yet?

There was someone in our cellar a couple of nights back. There's nothing down there to steal, but it's still scary stuff, given that my antiquated (sorry Mum, going for the pink pound) mother generally lives alone; the gate aka 'drawbridge' is kept permanently locked these days, and the garden is surrounded by high walls. So where did this guy - I assume it was a guy, or guys - come from, and how?

Our wash-house - which is protected in the same way - has been broken into so often now that my mother's given up trying to keep food in the freezer there. Because it gets stolen, and she doesn't like the thought of those kids getting food poisoning.

The kids hang out on the streets any time it isn't actually raining. And no, we don't live in London or Manchester or some godforsaken suburban sprawl, we live in what used to be a pleasant, if dull, little town on the edge of nowhere.

Dave the Bar nods when I mention the hassle Mum's been going through. 'Yeah, it's gone seriously downhill around here lately.' Great. Cool. Fantastic. Fix it?

So maybe it's not just me being paranoid after all. Maybe England _is_ just turning into a land of disrespect and thuggery. Or at least, this small part of it.

My brother mailed me tonight to say he's had enough of the Big City (his joke name for our small town) and is taking his herd of children back into the sticks just as soon as he can sell his house.

Dave also has children. He's been trying to sell up for over eighteen months, so I'm not holding my breath...

People here are gobsmacked (there is no better word) when I say I find it aggressive here after Israel. After all, everything you see in the press and on the TV says that Israel's one of the scarier places to be in the world. But then, there's no big story and no good pictures to be had out of a lone middle-aged woman walking home through city streets unaccosted at 4am. Even if there are thousands like her, night after night, it just doesn't make great news! Which just goes to show precisely how limited the idea of what constitutes 'great news' is.

Oh and my tooth fell apart today too. And I don't have a dentist in the UK since mine was arrested for selling cocaine back in the caring sharing 90s.

(Not that these items are related - but they kind of are, in a way.)

That's enough of the grumblies; I started to fit in better now (I swore at someone or something, and I can cross a road without thinking about where I am too hard, and I make it to the bar before it closes nearly every night now) so I guess I'll be back to my normal self in another week or so.

God help us all.