JonnyB's Holiday Snaps - #2 in a series of 3.

Hexham promised to be a pleasant enough place. We parked Daisy the Car and set off up the hill to the town.

Halfway up, a man started playing some bagpipes.

I hurried the LTLP along, concerned about the safety of my unborn child. I did look for a policeman but there were none in the immediate vicinity, so I had to let it lie.

Ironically enough, when we reached the town centre, Hexham seemed to be full of police. Not in a threatening, swarming way like a G8 conference or Italy, but just sort of wandering around in pairs, chatting to shoppers and shopkeepers and generally being There and Reassuring.

It was nice. Earlier on, I'd witnessed scores of vans full to the brim with tense-looking Metropolitan Police officers haring up the A1 away from the Capital towards Scotland. Who tipped them the warning??? If we could find this out then we would be closer to catching the bombers.

Anyway. I was going to stop a policeman and report a walk-by bagpiping, but I imagine it would have involved lots of filling in of forms and stuff, so I didn't bother.

Did I do the right thing? I don't know. They might get bagpipe-related incident all the time. It is the Northern equivalent of happy slapping. (I guess using Northumbrian pipes rather than Scottish ones is the equivalent plea to 'diminished responsibility').

I didn't want to get involved, the curse of twenty-first century society.