I Guess Their Blood Was Up?

Duanette Gray was travelling on the number 50 bus, when she saw what she described as a “mini-riot.”

She said: “It was hard to tell who was hitting who at the time, but the butchers had at least one man down on the ground and were attacking him.

“He disappeared amid the chaos and then they went for this big transit van. The van was trashed the mirrors gone, window smashed in.

“The butchers began to attack a bus coming from the opposite direction which really frightened us; it seemed they were only hitting it as it was in the way of the van.

“The butchers seemed to be looking for someone around the corner near the van, and then out of nowhere the man came running at them with what looked like a machete.

“Everyone on the bus was standing up trying to look out the window, screaming and crying. It was terrifying.”

I well remember our local butcher (before the rise of the supermarkets) - a huge, ruddy-faced man, assisted by a spindly, acne-faced youth on Saturdays, always genial and pleasant, despite the strength he must have possessed to chop and saw through giant, half-frozen carcases.

The thought that he might have decided to run amok in the high street as a result of an altercation with a customer, or attack one of London Transport's finest simply because he couldn't get to the object of his wrath, seems so far fetched as to be utterly impossible.

Still, we must have vibrant, multicultural diversity, it seems. We are all the better for it.

Aren't we?