A hearty English repast...

 Potato and leek soup, gammon with crackling, mash, carrots, and plenty of wine... Yes, it was a lovely farewell dinner prepared by my lovely next door neighbours. I will say, there are few things about England that I will truly miss, but my neighbours rank high amongst them.  

Ah well, my need to escape is still great. The other day, whilst shopping in another town for appropriately sized boxes and questing for a postal tube long enough for my didges (I will have to resort to buying two smaller ones and putting them end to end), I was chased back into a train station by a large (and ugly) pack of thuggish yobs, some of which I recognized as scum associated with the worst we've permanently excluded from my school in recent years.

They were carrying large piles of fresh snow (a novelty in southern England) and decided I'd make a great target for snowballs. There was about seven or eight of them, in their late teens. Many of 'em were large enough to be a substantial threat to me (and I only just now thought about how many of them were probably carrying a knife) and they were behaving in an aggressive and malevolent fashion. Sensing that a confrontation could get very ugly very quickly (these were yobs of the lowest order), I ducked back into the train station, not realizing that some of them would actually throw INTO the station itself and, whilst I tried to get a train staff member to phone the police, a number of forcefully hurled snowballs followed me. I would say that, fortunately, the English have lousy aim with a snowball, as I was never struck, but sadly, an older woman got struck in the head.

Pure yobbishness!

Fortunately, the presence of CCTV cameras in the station (which they seemed highly aware of (previous experience?)), as well as my rather loud demand for the attendent to phone the police, seemed to deter them from further nastiness and the thugs moved on. I last saw them in the high street near the station, where they proceeded to hurl snowballs at cars and whatever else they could terrorize. The train police were phoned, but I didn't stick around to see if they showed up or were able to do anything about them. I left the station in the opposite direction and went about my business whilst I still had time remaining. I completed my box shopping without further incident, but was glad to make it back to my own village.

Ya know, I should have talked about the dinner after the unpleasantness that preceded it. I could then have ended this post with a pleasant thought. *sigh*

Oh well, nothing to be done for it but to get on with my preparations.