A Sentimental Promenade, A Mugging and a Very Bad Face Day.

God, do I never learn? Spend the morning going through Connie's hair magazines in an attempt to find a photo of a haircut that will make me look less like a corpse. Finally find a good one of Kylie sporting a cute shaggy bob. I take it with me when I go into town, and present it to my hairdresser who, after looking me up and down without comment, puts the picture face down on the counter and wields her scissors. I am very excited, as this may be the moment at which I finally recapture my youthful good looks.


An hour later, I am forced to accept that, while my hair does now resemble Kylie's, my face does not. I have therefore wasted my money, and am doomed to keep on being pole-axed with horror whenever I catch sight of myself in shop windows and unexpected mirrors. I walk home, lacking the enthusiasm to even pick my feet up properly, and thus have three embarrassing moments of the catch toe on paving slab, stagger, pick self up and pretend nothing happened type. (This happens quite frequently, due to my  insistence on keeping my head down whenever I am in the town centre, in order to avoid having to make eye contact with any of the usual suspects who might be passing by.)


When I walk into the house, I find a uniformed policeman sitting on the sofa in the living room.

"What's Josh done now?" I say. It's all too much. Or too little, actually.

"Josh?" says the policeman. "Did you know the muggers?" He's addressing Connie. And Russ.

"No, of course we didn't know them," says Connie, glaring at me.

I am too busy freaking out to care.

"Muggers? Muggers? What's happened?" Are all my family destined to be regularly set upon by madmen?

"Tell you later, Mum," says Connie, pushing me back out into the hallway, and closing the door in my face.


After Connie and Russ have finished looking through mug-shot albums, in which Connie spots quite a few ex-classmates, but fails to identify the perpetrators, the policeman leaves, and I finally discover what has happened. It turns out that Connie and Russ decided to go for a supposedly romantic walk at lunchtime - down the newly-created "Green Walkway," which is sited on an unused section of railway track that runs from Easemount into the centre of Northwick. What complete idiots. As with most regeneration projects, the planners ignored the fact that its location might as well be bloody Beirut.

They'd just passed the first bend, thus positioning them out of sight of the road, when they were confronted by three youths. (These were men, according to Russ, but boys, according to Connie.) They surrounded Josh and Connie, and then just stood there swaggering and looking like "prats" (again according to Connie), or "thugs" (according to Russ). Then they demanded that Russ empty his pockets. He complied but only had a couple of quid.

At this point, Connie insists that the muggers were about to give up and move away - until Russ said, "But she's got money!" and pointed at her. Russ denies this and says that Connie assaulted him with her umbrella in an unprovoked attack, which he ascribes to the stress of the moment. Connie responds that it was the stress of having such a chicken-shit boyfriend that made her lose her temper, and ends the discussion by pointing out that, by the time she'd finished hitting Russ, the muggers had disappeared.


Josh nods in atypical approbation of his sister.

"Good one, Con. That's what I told you!" he says, giving her the thumbs-up.

"What is what you told her?" I am incredulous that Connie would listen to Josh's advice on any subject.

'Best way to avoid being mugged in the street is to behave like a mad person," says Josh. "You should try it at work, Mum.