Tranquil Warwick

R had to go for a scan on his poorly knee today, and as I'm now free (FREE!!!) from exam duties, I chauffeured him over to Warwick. It's possible that an offer of lunch may have been involved in the decision, but that's by the by.

While he was at the hospital I went over to Hatton Locks, an extraordinary flight of 21 locks on the Grand Union Canal, now beautifully maintained by a small army of volunteers. I've put one of my photos in as the first extra.

I then went and collected R and drove into the centre of Warwick, parking just by the Castle wall. As we walked away we were both amused by the time and effort we had spent making sure that nothing remotely attractive was left visible in the car - this was Warwick after all, not Wandsworth!

We were walking up Castle Street (shown in the second extra), when someone on the main road started furiously blasting their car horn. Then loud shouting began, followed by the noise of breaking glass. A few seconds later three men appeared and ran down the street towards us, wearing hoodies and with scarves over their faces. One of them was carrying a sledgehammer.

In the couple of seconds I had to take in this scene and process it, my train of thought went something like:

Robbery.
Camera.
Photograph.
Hammer.
Danger.
Camera is in bag.
Don't get camera stolen.

I hugged my camera bag to my bosom, we both veered in to the left side of the street, and they ran past us and disappeared. When we got to the junction of Castle Street and the High Street there were a number of people standing on the pavement looking at the damage to this frontage, and I realised that I hadn't been the only person in Warwick today who thought that Russell Lane was the best place in town for window shopping.

While we were having lunch in ASK, a couple of doors up the High Street, we were able to watch the arrival of various members of the local constabulary, and ponder the question of whether to offer ourselves as witnesses. We decided in the end that we would be useless - R hadn't heard the breaking glass, and I wasn't certain how many people had been running - but luckily there had been plenty of other people around. When I stopped to take this photo on the way back to the car we got into conversation with a couple who had been sitting outside a cafe in Castle Street when the "incident" occurred (my faith in my ability to provide a sensible witness statement was more than vindicated by the fact that I had noticed them as we walked past the cafe, but didn't recognise them even slightly when we were chatting); they had seen more than we had, and had given witness statements - and they told us that a couple of suspects had already been arrested.

The most annoying thing about this whole situation was that it interfered with my Cunning Plan to walk R slowly past Russell Lane's window and casually point out some of the utterly gorgeous vintage pieces they stock. He has a major birthday coming up, after all. Hang on... is that how it works....? No, I'm right... Yes, I'm sure I'm right. He has a major birthday, and I get major jewellery. Yes. Definitely. That's what happens. We'll have to pop back to Warwick soon, I think - just to do some window shopping...!