Sunny Hunny
Shame about the rain 
Annual church family outing to Hunstanton was today - and the day started with a little thunderstorm which set the tone…
The boys made us take buckets and spades so they could play on the beach and studiously ignored our mutterings about wellies and raincoats 
Thank goodness for the Sealife Sanctuary! We spent a couple of hours there (and L would happily have stayed for much longer at the Rock Pool section, where you could handle starfish, crabs and anemones) before being lured out by the promise of sun and some time on the beach - and then got side-tracked by the amphibious vehicle waiting to take people on a trip and did a cruise to the cliffs and lighthouse instead of building soggy sandcastles 
On the whole it was a good day (although it cost a fortune!) but a couple of things were really sad, including an overheard (could hardly have avoided overhearing as it was at top volume) exchange from a family walking ahead of us at one point: Woman to girl (presumably daughter) “If you don’t stop your bitching I’ll smash you one!” There were several people there so I assumed (not sure why) she was talking to one of the teenagers, but the girl who responded (inaudibly) could only have been about 5 and mum replied, with great venom and malice (and round a cigarette) “On your face!” Girl suitably cowed they all walked on 
Maybe I’m just soft, but I was so sad that a little girl should be spoken to like that 
I know I have no idea what had happened before but in the time we had been walking behind them she had been as good as gold, walking nicely and not saying a word - and she and the rest of the group seemed unsurprised at the threat 
The other sad thing was even worse
We saw a man with a little puppy, something like a Jack Russell, I think. We noticed because the puppy was very cute
A while later we saw the man again, this time on a bike in the middle of the road - with the puppy on a lead desperately trying to keep up
The man was veering all over the road, which was causing problems for cars trying to get past as well as for the puppy It became clear that he was veering so much because he was watching, and shouting and swearing at, a girl (presumably his daughter) riding a bike along the pavement on the other side of the road (iyswim). One particularly violent lurch to the middle of the road nearly got him run over by a van and he was so busy turning round to swear at the driver that he almost stopped, the puppy managed to run on ahead, then the bike lurched back over to the left again and he RAN OVER his own puppy
The poor little mite squealed and he scooped it up and made his way over to the side of the road, still shouting at the little girl and swearing at the driver as if it had been his fault. The front wheel had gone almost all the way over the poor little thing’s tummy and when he put it down its back legs wouldn’t support it He got cross and tried to make it stand up but it couldn’t. By this time we were closer and I was asking Bob what he thought we could do, but we just didn’t know The man handed the lead to the little girl, who had crossed over by now (not sure how he thought the dog was going to escape, but there!) and disappeared into a nearby cafe, then re-emerged with a handful of paper napkins, which I thought odd until I saw the drops of blood on the pavement. The poor little dog was spitting up blood
I heard the man tell the girl that there was a vet’s round the corner, so presumably he had also asked about that in the cafe, and we didn’t really want the children to see what was going on and be upset so we walked on, but I felt so bad not to have done anything. Bob says there is nothing we could have done, except call a vet and we didn’t know where one might be and it seemed the man was going to take the puppy to one anyway, but I have to admit I’m not sure he would bother. I mean, he was stupid and thoughtless enough to cycle with a puppy on a lead (bad) in the middle of the road (worse) whilst weaving in and out of traffic and concentrating more on shouting at others than on steering (appalling)… I really felt like phoning the police, but I don’t suppose there’s anything they could have done either 
Surely he would have taken it to the vet?
Ack - I’m so sorry, this is a totally nonsensical post! I was just so shocked and I have to get it out somehow
What should we have done?
July 22nd, 2006 at 9:52 pm
oh no, those are two really sad things
don’t know what I would have done 
Glad the sea life centre was fun though
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:26 am
how awful. I’d have been upset too. I’m not a vet, but I imagine it would be very serious for the puppy. however, if he did take it to a vet just around the corner, who did perform surgery - exploratory and then treat - it would hopefully be OK. stupid stupid stupid man.
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:40 am
You can only do what *you* are strong enough to do. I would have probably got involved but then I can take the abuse that would have probably got thrown at me. I have stepped in on a number of occasions when I have seen or heard people abusing their kids or animals. There have been many times I haven’t though for one reason or another. We all shout at our kids to various levels, we all have bad days and struggle with what is going on. Sometimes it can take some stranger stepping in to change your head. BUT you have to do what is right with you and if that means doing what feels like nothing then that is the right thing.
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:39 pm
There probably wasn’t much you could ahve done re the puppy, dreadful though the beahviour had been by the chap. You’d have no doubt got a lot of abuse, and unless you were physically going to take the puppy from him (and then find vets in strange town) what could you have done - if he was asking about vets he probably was goign to take it. And as Ros says, you can only do what you feel able to.
I too get saddend by the random abusive shouting that some kids seem to get. The level of shouting /abuse always seems in inverse relationship to whateer transgression the child might have done.
July 23rd, 2006 at 6:53 pm
My neighbours (who we share a low garden fence with) speak to their children (ages about 2 and 4 I think) like that, and a lot worse on a very regular basis. Sometimes I have to go inside and shut the door because I just can’t listen to it
At “you f’in little d’head” I had to seriously restrain myself.
As for the puppy, as sad as it is, I’m not sure there was much else you could have done.
July 23rd, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Well, I managed to find a vet. clinic with an address near to where we were so have emailed them to see if a dog was brought in and explain a little of the situation. If they feel it is worth taking further action then we will…
July 27th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
[...] The boys have got a toy plane that happens to be a stealth fighter, and I told J that it was hard to see with radar. He asked how this was, and I told him that special paint on the plane cancels out the radar waves, and I’d tell him more when we went to Hunstanton, by drawing on the beach. Due to the unpleasant weather and cramming lots of things in this didn’t happen. [...]