Eastwood Dipsticks

I went with the grumpy old man to Eastwood at dinner time to buy some Birthday cards, I won't be going again in a hurry.

The zebra crossings in Eastwood are irritating at the best of times, there are four on one short stretch of road. Half the time people cross the road in-between and expect you to stop for them anyway.

Today as always the GOM was doing his usual courteous driving, ie slowing down to a crawl up to the crossing just in case someone 50ft away may arrive there before we do and want to cross the road - believe me, at the speed we're going they've got time.

Three men stepped onto the crossing from our right, they were eating their dinner, chatting and dawdling, even stopping right in front of us to continue their obviously riveting conversation.

Oh bugger, the GOM pipped his hooter, two of them shifted, whilst saluting us with the customary two fingers. The other one carried on acting like a twat, walking backwards and forwards in front of us - not I might add on the crossing at this time, in his enthusiasm for stupidity he'd stepped off it.

'Right, we're entitled to run him over now,' was my opinion, the GOM started edging forward and over the crossing where this tosser was still eating and dancing, he turned his back on us and gave the front of our car a hefty kick with the bottom of his foot, I'm not entirely certain he was sober as he nearly fell over - although he didn't drop his chips. I could see we'd got an audience and people were shaking their heads at him [the tosser, not my chauffeur].

We carried on and parked up and I did a few shops [and one of us went to the bookies]. The same three men were seen - by my GOM going from one bookies to another - to throw their litter in the middle of Eastwood 'market place' while they were talking loudly to one of their buddies in a car/tank, then they went and fetched bottles of lager. A little later when the bottles were emptied, they were thrown at a house.

We honestly weren't trying to follow them to see what they were up to, I'd sooner have given them a very wide berth as I hate confrontation - We're often reading where someone has been kicked to death simply for looking at someone and I wasn't keen on my GOM becoming another victim of this ugly society we've become. It's just that when they threw the bottles they were passing our car that we were going back to at the time [holding our breaths as we spotted them in case they decided to have another go at it as it's a bit distinctive colour-wise].

Why do people behave like this? It's getting more and more that I don't want to leave the house, although I don't particularly feel safe here as last night I could hear the group of about eight or so youths [13-15 year old] that had been drinking at the bottom of Bridge Street at 6.30, jumping up and down and shouting on the bridge steps a few hours later. The GOM was going to go and have a look as they were messing about for so long but I asked him not to as we'd already had a close enough shave with lunacy for one day ...