It’s so cold here at the moment. Not great for the young foal that was born last week in the icy field adjacent to the recreation ground on Lansbury Drive.
He must be wondering why he suddenly finds himself in such frosty conditions when only a few days ago he was warm and snug in a [...]

‘Trick or treat!’
‘I’ll have a treat, please.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’ll have a treat, please,’ I repeated, holding out my hand.
‘But . . . erm . . . we ain’t got any.’ He looked around rather dejectedly at his small cohorts dressed as witches, ghouls and zombies and shook his head. They all shrugged in unison.
‘You didn’t come prepared? [...]

Nice to know that motherly love is alive and well and living in north Derbyshire.
Overheard by me and Audrey in the park this morning:
‘Shanazy, come here. Come here, Shanazy. Shanazy! Come here! Shanazy! Damn you, you filthy little maggot. Wait till I tell your dad.’
She was a pretty little thing, too – for a filthy [...]

Aren’t teenagers great.
Whilst wandering through the park with Audrey yesterday evening, a group of adolescents dressed as a cross between Marilyn Manson and street urchins from Oliver Twist, thought it would be fun to shout abuse at us from the relative safety of the dilapidated bandstand in which they had ensconced themselves to smoke joints, [...]

‘Billy, come down from there!’ his mother chided him in agonised entreaty. ‘Those are your best trousers!’
‘No they’re not,’ shouted the little boy. He scrambled even higher up the wall. ‘These are my climbing trousers.’
Hearing the querulous squeals of little Billy on the rec’ this morning and watching this anxious woman wringing her hands in [...]

Once again, the filthy urchins of the parish have outdone themselves.
When they turned up at the house last night, they had not even bothered to dress up in the appropriate Halloween costumes or masks. ‘Trick or treat!’ came the inevitable demand.
They were actually shouting at the window because I was pretending that I wasn’t at [...]

I don’t believe it! There is still more than a week to go to Halloween, yet premature junior beggars in ridiculous costumes are still knocking on my door demanding that I give things to them.
Last night, a gaggle of scruffy little urchins arrived carrying specially designed pumpkin-orange buckets with swirly black ghosts printed on them. [...]

We had the season’s first trick-or-treaters at the house yesterday. They seem to arrive earlier and earlier every year. The 31st of October is still over two weeks away but there they were at the door with their plastic masks and little hands held out demanding gratuities.
One of the begging children last night was a [...]

‘Aaaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee!’
That was the rather alarming sound that was coming from an ugly little boy-child whom Audrey and I passed this morning. He did not want to go to school.
It sounded like someone was killing a pig. Audrey was most dismayed. ‘I’m not surprised he’s ugly,’ I whispered to her. ‘Look at his mother.’
The desperate woman [...]