[Ding Dang Doo]

I took my eldest two children to Alton Towers yesterday.

Having a great time... going on all of the rides they wanted to go on, them 'bottling' it before going on the big rides... eating junk food... getting wet on the rides... brill!

Unfortunatley, it was all marred for me by an incident whilst queuing for one of the rides at the end of the day...

... happily chatting with my children, but getting a bit annoyed with the three 'lads' (they were late teens, early twenties) standing behind us... constantly using the F word, amongst others, with loads of children around them, and all of them spitting... yuck. I was trying my best to ignore them when one of them burped and blew the rotten stinking blech straight at me... with a 'have some of that' grin on his face!

Final straw for me - I looked at him, shook my head and asked which gutter he had woken up in this morning. Well, that was it it for him and his two mates.. they launched into a brarrage of abuse at me - blaming me for wanting to start a fight in front of all of these children, how much of an F-ing w***er I was... it just kept coming.

Now, I was in a dilemma - under normal 'one on one' circumstances, I would have entered the 'discussion' giving as good, and hopefully better than the rubbish I was being given. But something told me that these guys weren't going to give up if I started back.

I could just see the situation blowing up and it getting VERY nasty, very quickly (How was I to know that these guys weren't tooled up in some way - they had distinctive accents, and from living faily close to that area, I know that knife crime etc. is commonplace) - something was telling me to just turn around and ignore the little scroats. My children were shocked, and so by the looks of things were many other people in the queue. I was on my own really, no offer of help from any of the other people in the line - so I had to turn my back on them while they carried on with their torrent of obscene language, aimed at me, for the next 20 minutes while we waited to get on the ride.

I felt, not humiliated (well if I'm honest, perhaps just a little bit, as my children were with me, and I couldn't really stick up for myself) but angry that these people could get away with their actions.

How sad it is that this sort of treatment towards others, seems to almost accepted in society, that they were acting in such an aggresive manner and no one else could/would offer any assistance to me.


Thank you - do feel a bit better for sounding off.

Pete