The night I was ambushed in my car – by a 13-year-old with pigtails

Evening Standard | 14 Jul 1990

It was seven o’clock on Tuesday evening when four children attacked me. I’d never met them before, never set eyes on them. I had just parked my car, a geriatric red Volkswagen Golf, in the King’s Road, by the World’s End estate. I was meeting friends, and was wondering whether I’d get a ticket for parking there. Just then, a young girl with pigtails crossed the road, walked between the rear of my vehicle and the one behind it, and delivered a forceful kick to the back of my car followed by smashing her hand on the rear windscreen.

What on earth did she think she was doing, I asked, as I wound down the window.

• Caroline’s Life