I go walking in the Dark

Nant stays approximately half a mile away. If you were to drive, you would drive a mile, out of the estate, down the main road, into her estate and into her cul-de-sac.

If you walk, it's through the park, 1 under the railway bridge, thru the tunnel, and maybe 500 yards from the tunnel to her house, I'm no good at distances, it's not far anyway.

The last time I went, I headed for the tunnel. It is a dark tunnel and it goes under the fly-over into Troon, it was built so that the people of Barassie could access Barassie Station directly, which became cut-off to them when the fly-over was built. It can be quite scary, but Tooli belle has no fear of it, and as you do when you are a mother, you don't breed fear in your child where possible.

The tunnel itself is maybe 50 yards long. I was perhaps 30 yards in when three youths approached from the opposite end. I nearly froze. they were quite burley and I thought, "well I've got my phone", and then I thought, "but it's probably my phone they'd take. They got closer and it was obvious they weren't going to step aside for me - I had to almost step up the curved sides to avoid them.

On the way back, I decided to avoid that confrontation, I went the long way and walked up and over the fly over.

Tonight. I thought I'd be braver. Additionally, I had a stick with me. I didn't take the walking stick - Simon had given it to Nant to poke with. I was merely bringing it home. As I neared the tunnel, I noticed 3 girls ahead of me, obviously heading in the same direction, I quickly upped my pace and got within 15 yards of them. They entered the tunnel just ahead of me, and I thought excellent, I'll just get through behind them.

Imagine my horror when I turned into the Tunnel to be faced by the three girls all standing about 15 feet in the tunnel looking back out at me. I thought "Oh My God, I'm going to be mugged by girlies".

However, my horror was misplaced as they proceeded to extract bottles from their pockets and plonked themselves down on the curved sides.

The Tunnel was obviously their hidey-hole of choice for an evening's drinking.

I'm sorry the picture is such poor quality - I took it with my phone as I came out the other side of the tunnel. But I wante to try and capture the dark leading up to the tunnel, contrasting with the fluroescent light inside. You can just make out one of the girls standing. She was wearing barely anything and was complaining about being too cold to text.... I think she was maybe veering towards hypothermia!

I'm so glad I had better things to do when I was young!