To think of Jumping Jack Flash, the Midnight Rambler, the Beggar's Banquet Supervisor, getting dubbed on the shoulder by Her Maj, and joining the polite ranks of Sir Cliff Richard – well, it just goes against nature. They all sat as still as rabbits in a stalag, waiting for the onslaught to be over.David Letterman, the amusing talk-show host, said last year: "New York now leads the world's great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn't make a sudden move." He was seriously under-estimating London at the height of its rainy, tearful, traffic-jammed, bad-tempered, Jubilee, World Cup summer.Dark knightThe news that Mick Jagger may be knighted in the Birthday Honours has caused much head-shaking among old Stones fans. He remonstrated with him, in picturesque fury, through the Volvo's closed window Nobody went anywhere for 10 minutes. Rather than drive off, the big Rasta got out and went looking for the guy who'd honked him just because he was talking too much.
Seeing the two cars in front of me starting to quiver with frustration, I silently mouthed, "Please don't honk your horn Please don't..." Then somebody did All the chatterers' smiles disappeared. At which she grabbed a single courgette off the display outside a vegetable shop and hurled it, with thrilling accuracy, at his groin.In a side-street off the Old Kent Road, I sat five cars back in the queue of motorists who were waiting to turn left, while the driver in front – a big, comfortable-looking Rasta – wound down his window to chat to two passing friends They were so glad to see him They had such a lot of news to share.Minutes ticked by. The young beggar had a bad leg, so he couldn't chase her to shut her up; he couldn't match her for rhetoric, so he comforted himself by flinging his lunchtime sandwiches at his fuming ex-beloved's head. She danced right up to him, screeched in his face, then took three steps back as he tried to get up, jigged to his right, then his left, yelling all the time, then jumped up and down on the spot with fury, like Rumpelstiltskin. Her body language was dazzling, all balletic gesture and flailing arms.
She haled him up and down, complaining about his selfishness, his stupidity, idleness, tactlessness, treachery, even the poor quality of his membrum virile. And there's now a form of street theatre in London, as you watch murderous theatrical rows break out. In Acre Lane, Brixton, yesterday, I sat in a traffic jam and watched an epic barney between a seated young beggar and (presumably) his ex-girlfriend She was shaking with rage. Watching the veins standing out in Roy Keane's neck as he argues furiously with referees, it's hard to tell if we're regressing back to sabre-toothed tiger days or advancing to a new future in which our strong human emotions, once tamped down by stiff upper lips, will be written all over our bodies. The scenes from Moscow of plastered football fans torching cars in the street (presumably Toyotas) after losing to Japan was a startling reminder of how much culture and civilisation we've given the world. Anger, my God we've all got so angry these days. I suspect she may well know more about this than anyone else.More of this very exciting case tomorrow, I hope More from Miles Kington. Even the judge noticed.Judge: Quiet in court! What is the meaning of this disgraceful exhibition? Who are these children?Leading child: We saw the balloons outside the room, sir, and thought this was where the party was!Judge: Balloons? Party? What party?Counsel: I suggest that you call Mrs Treadwell, m'Lud.
She sometimes puts them on my gate in the evening and arranges for the arrival of gangs of noisy teenagers...At this point, there was a sensation in court when 15 small children burst into the courtroom, waving lighted sparklers and blowing party hooters. Well, getting back to the balloons, is it not more of a practical joke than anything else to put balloons on your gate and pretend that you are having a children's party?Porter: Oh, but it is not just a children's party. The whole of suburbia is governed by long-standing resentments of such complexity that it would take a new agency set up by George W Bush to get to the bottom if them.Counsel: I see. But the people who owned Mrs Treadwell's house before she moved in had a deadly argument with the people who owned my house before I bought it, and she and I have inherited the dispute.Counsel: Are you asking us to believe that you and Mrs Treadwell are engaged in a feud started by people you don't know for a cause you are not aware of?Porter: May I ask you a question?Counsel: If it is relevant.Porter: Do you live in suburbia?Counsel: No.Porter: Well, if you did, you would not have to ask such a question. Some of them will not leave till I have given them a going-away present.Counsel: And why do you suppose Mrs Treadwell would go to all these lengths to annoy you?Porter: Because she hates me.Counsel: Why do you think she hates you?Porter: It is a long-standing neighbourhood dispute.Counsel: Over what?Porter: Nobody is quite sure now. She recruits them and dresses them up and puts pretty little bows in their hair and positions them in my garden with instructions to charge in and look for a party.