Visited parents on boxing day, coming back today. Went out to my old local - IPA at £1.35 a pint... lovely. Woke this morning, looked out the window to be greeted by a road sealed off with crime scene tape, loads of yellow markers in the road, and the place crawling with green-romper suited forensics officers. Decided to go out and see if I could get a newspaper. Officer stationed outside the house in question assured me that it was OK for us to go places by foot, but using the cage was out of the question 'for a couple of hours - but they told me that at 7am this morning'. Poor fucker had been stood there freezing his 'nads off for hours waiting for something to happen. Had a bit of a look around, saw lots of claret and plastic sheeting. Eeeek! 6 hours later, managed to persuade another officer that I _really_ needed to get my cage out so I could go home. The SOCO didn't seem to approve. But fuck 'em. I was out. Still nothing on the local news - initially I thought someone had been waving a gun around, but the local gossip says a stabbing. WTF is going on in this country? - seems there were several shootings last night - at least one in Manc, that one in Leeds and another in Brum :-(