No Stone Unthrown

Our office borders on to a local council estate. Along the boundary wall on the council estate side there is a green area which is something like 40-50 yds long. On our office side there are car parking spaces. The office building is maybe 10-20 yds away from the boundary wall.

There have been recent incidents of people throwing (or otherwise propelling) golf balls at the office windows directly parallel to the green area. Nobody knows who is breaking the windows, but it would not be unreasonable to at least suspect that some of the vandals might, perhaps, be residents of the council estate (all those qualifications...).

Yesterday, at work, one of the lads in the office mentioned that there were kids throwing stones at the cars parked in the spaces along the boundary wall. I decided to do a bit of discreet investigation, so I went to the gents' convenience which overlooks the boundary wall.

Looking out the window, there was little to be seen initially. There was some bits and pieces of assorted junk in the green area and what looked like a young tree which had been knocked over or cut down. Within a minute or so, this young boy, possibly 9 or 10 years old, light hair and wearing a purplish hoody, strolled onto the green area, followed quickly thereafter by another young boy with a light blue T-shirt and dark hair. He was probably around the same age as Hoody. The last of the trio to appear was a little girl with long blonde hair, tied back in a pony-tail. She was 5 or 6 years old max.

Suspecting that something was about to happen, I opened the convenience window a crack more to get a better view. Within a minute, Hoody had hauled himself up the boundary wall and was (for want of a better expression) draped over it. Next thing, he starts throwing small pebbles at the windscreen of a Citroen Xsara Picasso that was directly in front of him. After another minute, he progressed to pouring gravel onto the bonnet of the car from some form of container like a cocoa tin.

At this point, I decided to ring our building managers to advise them of the situation.

Bad and all as Hoody had been up to this stage, he really stepped over the line when he started dropping rocks onto the bonnet of the Citroen. Whatever damage the pebbles and gravel might have done, there was no doubt that the rocks were doing serious harm.

I got out my camera phone and tried to take some photos of the carry-on, but I was not at all confident that they would come out OK. So I decided to shout out the window at Hoody, who by this stage had slid down from the wall and was ambling around the green area.

"Hoi", I shouted, "I've got your picture on my camera!".

Hoody merely pulled his hood over his head, covered his face with his hand á la Martin Cahill and flipped me the bird.

While all this was going on, little Blondey was running around the green area having a great time. When I shouted at her that I was going to take her picture, she shouted back to me "I don't give TWO SHITS!"

All three kids then proceeded to hide behind the felled tree.

When I was kid (and up to divilment as was my wont from time to time), I'd practically crap meself if some adult caught me in the act and shouted at me. But now...

Well, you know, at this stage, there really wasn't much point doing anymore about this. The appropriate authorities had been informed, so I want back to my desk and discussed the issue with my colleagues.

Apparently the cops turned up to hunt the kids away, but they came back within minutes.

I don't know what the fallout of this will be. I don't know if the kids were local to the estate, and I'm not saying that they are, but it would not be unreasonable to at least suspect...

Regards,


djp