Almost two months after the break-in, on a Sunday evening, I had spent a very pleasant couple of hours luxuriating in a hot bath with the papers. I'm one of the people who can't just skip to the supplements that interest them; I live alone, so it feels like a waste if I don't read all of them in at least some detail. I skip most of the sports stories that are on topics I don't follow (another way of saying I only really read the rugby section), and I only really skim through the travel, but the rest I read almost all of. Sure, I skip the odd story here and there, but usually I'll read the first paragraph or so even then.

At about 11.30 pm, I padded downstairs in a bathrobe/dressing gown thingy, grabbed a cold beer from the fridge, and idly watched some TV. For about the last hour in the bath, I'd heard the odd shout from the streets outside, but put it down to high spirits on the way home form the pub - since licencing laws have been relaxed here, kicking-out time spreads more thinly, so you get fewer drunks at any one time, but over a longer period. My bathroom is at the back of my house facing away from the street anyway, and it had only been sporadic, so I'd thought nothing more of it.

But from downstairs, the noise was louder and clearly coming from my street. While it is a cul-de-sac for traffic, there are several footpaths that lead off from the dead end, so it gets used as a short cut on foot. (This is one of the best things about living there - it's usually very quiet, but it's easy to get to & from my home to go out, do shopping, etc.) I remember watching the Snooker World Championships on TV, which is a quiet sport, and becoming more curious / annoyed by the noise outside. Clearly, whoever it was wasn't just passing through.

At about 00:15, by now just finishing my second beer, I got curious / annoyed enough to get up and look out of my window. Three kids were shouting and screaming. None of them looked old enough to be out after 9.00pm on a school night, let alone gone midnight. There was a lull. I cracked open my third beer, settled back with the snooker, and took a sip just as a fresh cacophany came from the street outside, including what sounded like breaking glass and a drum-like sound.

Wearing nothing but my bathrobe (done up) & slippers I walked outside, holding my mobile phone in my hand. Loudly and with pantomime gestures, I told the shouting kids that I was going to call the police and that they should stop messing about. One stood outside my front gate (my house is set back from the public pavement by perhaps six or seven feet) and ignored me completely, shouting so loud that I couldn't hear the operator asking if I wanted police, fire or ambulance. I had to ask her to repeat it. I asked for police, and when I got through to them, I began explaining that there was a disturbance in my street that had been ging on for some time.

The breaking glass looked like it had come from at least two side mirrors on the cars parked in the street - one I could see was hanging off by a wire. The drum-like noise probably came from the small white van parked in front of it, which had a large and obvious dent in its side.

There were two boys and a girl making all the racket. The girl was in tears and looked more upset than angry. The smaller of the two boys - he looked about 15 in the face, but was scrawny and looked barely 5'6" or 5'7" - was doing most of the shouting, while the taller - who looked about the same age, but was less skinny (while without the physical bulk that comes with full adulthood) and looked closer to 6' tall - was quieter. The taller boy was waving around what I later found out to be a windscreen wiper that had been ripped from the white van, while the shorter clutched an unopened champagne-style bottle. The sort that's made from heavy, thick glass to stop it bursting under pressure.

It turned out that most of their anger was directed towards one of my neighbours, perhaps 10 doors up the street. He was outside on his own, silently watching the fun. Closer observation revealed that all four of the cast of this impromtu street theatre were at the very least drunk.

While I was still on the phone to the police, the girl walked up the street (I live on a hill) towards my neighbour. Before she was halfway there, the two boys ran, shouting, past her towards my neighbour. The smaller one threatened that he was going to 'bottle' him. Drunk, as he was, my neighbour was driven back a little, it seemed more in surprise than any great pain or distress. Now, he is a full-grown man so has the broad shoulders and stockier build that comes with manhood. Watching pigeons fluttering around a statue, sometimes the fluttering clamour creates the illusion that the statue itself is moving. This assault (in both the literary and legal senses) created the same impression.

But not for very long - a moment later, perhaps just long enough for adrenaline to kick in, the man surged forwards, knocking the boys back like the children they were. In a few instants, the smaller boy was running back halfway down the street (about level with me), while the taller lad was physically bundled face-first into the pavement, leaving his cheek grazed and bleeding. I don't see how this could be described as anything but self-defence, and if it ever came to court I would say so with a clear conscience.

Once this was done, the man seemed to sink back inside and reverted to a drunk, wobbling about slightly. The boys, on the other hand, went wild. I swear, it was like watching a nature documentary, when the young male chimps feel threatened by an older, more powerful male. They might try a direct confrontation, but would lose it, so they swing about in the branches, breaking off twigs and screeching more in fear than anger. Instead of trees, think cars. Instead of twigs and branches, think side mirrors and windscreen wipers. Instead of chest-beating and teeth-baring, think taking off a t-shirt to reveal a scrawny torso while screeching "you fucking..." this and "you fucking..." that. If it hadn't been real damage to real people's property, the comedy value of dubbing a David Attenborough commentary in my head would have made the whole scene quite hilarious.

After a moment or two, the frenzy receded back to the general shouting that had been going on all night, and it became possible to work out some of what was going on.

The girl, between sobs, would say to the boys things like "leave him alone, he didn't know".

The taller boy kept saying, to himself as much as the (increasing number of) bystanders , "he's a perv", "you don't know", "it's his fault" and "fucking silver B M fucking W", presumably a reference to my neighbours car.

And the shorter boy said things like "she's my bird", "she's my girlfriend", "he's been messing with my girlfriend", and "she's only 15".

At one point, he addressed these exclamations directly at me. I said "And...?"

"'And...?' Whaddya mean 'And...?'?"

"I mean, whatever this guy has done, do you think you're going to solve anything by shouting in the street about it in the middle of the night and breaking bits off the cars of people with nothing to with it?"

He scowled in thought for a fraction of an instant as the idea penetrated his drink-addled brain, visibly rejected a line of logic that might put him in the wrong, and repeated "but she's 15".

In light of all this I assume on of to possible scenarios:

1. That my neighbour had met a young woman in a pub or nightclub or such who looked old enough, had maybe slept with her and later found out she was underage, and wisely broken off the budding relationship. She, distraught, had confessed to her 'boyfriend' (or the boy her age who thought he had this job at least) who, with his best friend, had cooked up a plan for petty revenge over a night of illicit booze and/or drugs by deciding to vandalise the car of the man who'd corrupted the innocence of his virginal future bride (my arse). On attempting this, they found the object of their hatred in and awake, and not in the mood to watch his car trashed by pissed-up kids.

2. My neighbour - who has not been seen in my street since these events - really is the kind of "perv" these kids seem to think he is, and "groomed" this young girl into an underage and exploitative relationship with him. The kids, while perhaps misguided, misdirected and unfocused, perhaps had a noble motivation.

Either way, the kids started moving as a group down the hill just as that (open) end of the street was lit by a car approaching and then stopping. As well as headlamps, there was the unmistakeable blue and red flashing of a police car. From making my call to the police, it had taken perhaps ten minutes for them to arrive, which at the time I thought quite impressive. Later on, I found out that about six separate people had made calls from my street, the first over an hour before I had made mine. The mounting concern of residents, coupled with the passage of time, had pushed the incident higher and higher up the priority list.

The drunk neighbour stood somewhat forlornly in the middle of the street outside his house. My immediate neighbour and his wife had joined me outside, and as we chatted over our connecting wall about the night's happenings, the drunk man approached and addressed me directly. "Do you want some an' all?" he enquired, not entirely politely.

"See those lights at the bottom of the street, mate?" I asked him. "That's a police car. I think you'd better just go to bed." Somewhat sheepishly, he ambled back to his house and went inside, and has not been seen there since, as I mentioned.

Several of my neighbours were now milling about in the street. A man opposite me was not best pleased at being kept awake until 1am, having to work his shift from 4am. And two or three other were walking down towards the police car, either to tell them what they had seen or to just be nosy. With a foot in both camps, I asked my next-door neighbour to keep an eye on my house while I walked down toward the police car, careful not to make sudden movements lest my bathrobe flap open in the night breeze and get me arrested for indecent exposure. 

Near the car, a policewoman spoke calmly to the still-sobbing teenage girl, while the taller lad looked on. In the lights of the police car, his faced was still bleeding from his pavement encounter.

The smaller boy was being defensive under questioning from a male policeman. The boy took an innefectual swing at him, at which point what little patience he had left evaporated and he arrested the boy in fine Starsky and Hutch style i.e. the boy was propelled face-first onto the bonnet of the patrol car, hand quickly cuffed behind him. While in this position, the constable searched the boy's pockets as I looked on, and found a small, cheap-looking plastic craft knife in the back pocket of the boy's jeans. So as well as assault, the officer cautioned him for carrying an offensive weapon. At this point, these charges were purely for offences the officer and I witnessed while stood near the car - the rest of the evening's law-breaking being moot.

While we were distracted by this, the other boy sloped off back up the hill. The policewomen having satisfied herself that the girl had done nothing wrong (if not anything stupid) told her to go home and sleep off whatever she'd been drinking, and she joined her friend and they disappeared, I assume to go home grumbling about the unfairness of the world.

As soon as the police had taken names and contact details from the five or six residents now milling about, including me, they made ready to leave, and after some typically British stoicism, eye-rolling and grumbles, we went home to our beds.

As I get back to my house, I thanked my next-door neighbour, said "By the way, we've never properly met - my name is Julian". He shook hands and introduced himself too. Prior to this we'd always been on nodding/smiling/"hello" terms, but never known one another's name. Also typically British, even though he's Italian. There you go...