An 'Incident'

 Browsing in the Lichfield & Burntwood Independent, I came across the headline 'Police seek to reassure residents after incident'. Oh dear, I thought, what could that have been?
It was this: on Market Street the other day, a group of 'around six males' had chased another group 'for no reason'. Admittedly they appeared to have their faces covered, which must have looked slightly alarming, but no one was injured and no threats were made. The police were quick off the mark in responding, and are now busy 'working proactively in the area to reassure residents' and 'taking steps to address concerns proactively across the city'. It's things like this that make me so glad to be living in Lichfield rather than London. Even in the leafy suburb (the Demiparadise) where I lived, an 'incident' like this would never have made page 8 of the local paper; it wouldn't have made the paper at all, nor would the police be 'proactively' reassuring residents. Those days are long gone. Now, even a stabbing would most likely be a small story on an inside page. 
Also in the L & B Independent, I see that the excellent local history group Lichfield Discovered is setting up a heritage 'hub' – in the Schoolmaster's House (dating back to 1682) of Lichfield grammar school, where Samuel Johnson and David Garrick were pupils. Ah, Lichfield...