Oh man, there goes the neighbourhood!
Walking out to get some Indian food takeaway I see some little heads popping up and down behind a fence on Brockley Cross across from a block of flats (one of which has aptly had letters removed from it's name, thus changing it from "Conifer house", to "Conifer Use"). Up pop two little head screaming "surprise!". Two cute little kids, one little
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Two of us went out to dinner in St Pauls, Bristol. Nice restaurant, we go there regularly. Now I've lived here for years, I used to work right on the Frontline, so the whole Scary, Scary, Scary St Pauls!! thing doesn't really bother me. These days is _nothing_ to how it was 10 years back.
We walk back to the car. A couple of kids, 9-10 years old are walking in front of us and one of them is playing with his revolver.... It's black, there's no orange muzzle to it, but by the way he's clicking the hammer down onto leaves in the hedges I soon clock it as a plastic toy. I think no more of it, we walk past them.
We get into the car. It's a hot night, we put the windows down a few inches. Then laddo sticks his hand in through the gap in the window and demands (I kid you not) "give us 10p".
Now what do you do? It's not beyond possibility that someone will do this for real on that street. If anyone over 4' tall had been standing nearby, I'd have been watching them in case they did try it on (I'm blase, but I ain't stupid). Responses at this point hinge round trapping / breaking his wrist / fingers and generally getting medieval on the nearest body part. If that hand is holding a gun, then it's fair game with whatever's to hand...
But this kid is a kid. And I've already clocked it as a toy, so I'm not bothered by it all, just puzzled. What is the approved and appropriate response to this brat? Phone the Daily Mail? Hug his hoodie? The trouble is that for many of the cars round there, you pull a plastic gun on them and they'll pull a much more real one on you. I try to suggest to him that this is the dumbest act of his short life, to be surpassed only by his final dumb repeat performance on the wrong guy. He's not listening.
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