"Come dowsed in mud, soaked in bleach, as I want you to be..."

Nottingham is really gaining something of a reputation for gun crime. This story is horrible... a 14 year old girl walking home from the Goose Fair is shot in the stomach by someone in a passing car in St Annes. I've lived here for 7 years now, and I have to say that I have seen none of this kind of underbelly in my time here. Granted, I now live south of the river... but it really doesn't seem that bad to me.



Certainly, the town centre is quite an unpleasant place to be on a friday or saturday night. I'm not proud about that, but is it any different from any other town centre in Britain? People go out, they get pissed and rowdy, and at a little after 11 they all pile onto the streets to eat fast food, piss in alleyways and generally make a nuisance of themselves. I don't like it, and I try and stay away from the town centre at these times for exactly this reason, but is it really so different from anywhere else in the UK?



I don't feel any less safe in Nottingham than I have in any other major British city. That may be a sad reflection on the state of British cities, but it always seems to be Nottingham that hits the headlines.



Sorry if the last couple of posts have been a bit sombre, but that seems to be the way of the world at the moment.