Should I be worried...

The charred grasses of "the grassy area, off Maude Street, Kendal" where the chair was destroyed.

So this morning I got up at my usual early time of 6:15am, after a night spent watching Rainman on Film 4, and headed out to deliver the morning papers and earn a crust to pay for the boat that's on order (it should have left America yesterday[!]). I then got home and settled down to a half-hour or so on the net and then breakfast accompanied by The Times newspaper. I got to the fifth page to be greeted with the headline: "Office chair set on fire - news that made the world sit up..." Obligingly I read on and then once finished with the article I headed back to the Internet to check out what was said in the article.

Basically The Times article was an apology to its readers because it failed "to report an earth shattering event in Cumbria last month". I was intrigued. The aforementioned event was the burning of an office chair "in the middle of a grassy area" by a delinquent and this was first reported on the Westmorland Gazette here. Why did The Times feel it necessary to apologize for not reporting this event? It was what followed the reporting of the event, which was what was so astounding and what The Times felt necessary to apologize for.

To date there have been over 70 comments on the article about the burnt chair and these have been posted by concerned individuals from every corner of the globe and Kendal. Such a large amount of comments obviously proves that the reporting of the burnt chair was of great importance to the population, and The Times, as a leading broadsheet, should have picked up on this story and given it the column inches it deserved when it first occurred back on that Friday in late January. I however, forgive The Times as they have now brought my attention to the worrying fact that Kendal is rife with gang warfare, with such notorious gangs like the Standard Lamp Posse of Kendal operating on the streets at night!

Should I be worried by this fact? I spend a large proportion of my spare time around that area and in a couple of years time I'll be spending even more of my time up there when I head to university. I don't really want to get in with the wrong crowds (Standard Lamp Posse of Kendal) and it seems that they take no prisoners if you don't join them. However, I am not a piece of furniture and it seems their grievances are with furniture not people. Maybe I'll just tread carefully when I'm in Kendal and not let on that I sometimes like an office chair to take my weight.

Recently there has been a follow-up article posted to the same website, Westmorland Gazette.

Good lines, stay safe and see you on the wet stuff...
Iain