We Witnessed

15.40 341 Bus. Harringay.

An Eastern European woman got on the bus ahead of us with her daughter and sat down on the front left seat (top deck).

A middle-teenaged girl was sitting in the right front seat, and her friend came up from the back of the bus somewhere saying excuse me I was sitting there, addressing the Eastern European woman gruffly.

"Did you buy the whole bus?" was her retort.

The two girls sat across the aisle from the woman and her daughter bitching loudly about her - the cheek of it, they don't deserve to be in the country, bet they don't even have a passport, wait til they get deported back to where they came from.

Finally the woman said something back, which started a slanging match which suddenly erupted, on the girls behalf, to the point where one of them stood up and took her belt off and threatened to hit the woman's daughter with it. And the woman herself. All the while thwacking the belt on the side of the bus.

The woman said if she did that she would call the police.

And the girl said, "yeah and if they come I'll just tell them what you did."

Shamefully we sat there silent witnesses to the extreme overreaction and threatening behaviour, not quite believing what we were seeing and not quite sure what to do about it. I wish I was certain of my voice and that I could use it to tell the girls to calm down, without causing their wrath to be turned against me. I wish there was a number to call and report these kinds of things. These kinds of things and other things like pickpocketing and stuff. But its difficult to know what to do when if you call the police the perpetrators will be long gone before they arrive.