School's out
The wind is howling. Children leaving primary school for the very last time are howling. Mrs Bancroft's hanging basket has come crashing down, along with the clematis on the wall. Posh Totty and MDF Man have got a fire going and it's still only six o'clock. Crow Man has given up trying to change his flat tyre on his Land Rover Discovery outside my front door and called in reinforcements in the shape of the farmer who wears a deerstalker and long sideburns and sends tractors to the Third World. The police have just paid a visit to the pub after another break-in. Not long after, the landlord's daughter arrives home from London after falling 20ft from a window on to concrete below and lives to tell the tale. Ding Dong Daddy marches down the road for a swift pint as if keeping to the beat of an integral iPod playing jazz inside his polished head. The Union Jack outside the shop has wrapped itself around so many times it looks like a patriotic barber's pole. Nobby Odd-Jo...