PL3A53 R3B00+

I'm feeling old. I've lost touch with the youth of today. That's a definite sign of getting old...That said I'm not sure I was in touch with it when I was a youth.

I don't remember being a nuisance as a child. Those kids I knew back then were never malicious as such, unless it was at each other.

We have a plum tree in our garden. It overflows into the parking that we have between our house and next door. It turns out that the friends of next door's kid decided that grabbing plums from the tree and throwing them at the house was a fun game to play.

The noise was the first thing to alert me. I heard a weird regular tapping noise that I surmised after spotting them out of the corner of my eye was them throwing plums at our roof. So I went outside in amiable "What is it you're doing" fashion. They scarpered with speed only garnered from the knowledge that you are doing something wrong.

I stood hidden for a while wondering if they would come back but decided that I didn't feel like playing so went back inside. I heard them run back and forth and went out the front to see them hiding in the next door neighbours doorway giggling.

They ended up in the neighbours back garden in the end sitting at the end of it waiting for me to stop paying attention. So I decided it was time to take the fun out of it for them. I pulled the curtain across and ignored them. The little buggers certainly tried their hardest to get a rise out of me. They threw directly at the window and at one point I think they switched to pips. choccoweeble was close to getting herself riled up and asking them if they wanted the cops round. In the end...silence. So youths 0 moral victory 1.

The issue I have is that had they just been scrumping my plums I wouldn't have minded as much. That's a time honoured tradition and usually ends in plum pudding. But wasting them before they've had the time to ripen properly I can't stand. Grumble...