Walking Home

I walked over to the Academy to fetch Carol from work at around 4 p.m. yesterday. It's getting dark at that time and she doesn't feel 100% safe. You have to buzz reception at the gate to get in, and you are being constantly watched by surveillance cameras, as a security precaution. Carol has a card which she swipes to open the gate as she's a staff member, but I don't have a card, not being a staff member. I waited in the reception foyer when I got inside the building. Carol appeared after about 15 minutes and we walked out of the Academy campus. There was a group of students leaving as we left, and they were walking ahead of us. They were somewhat abusive to a man who was about to enter the campus, calling him all sorts of names and  and we walked in the same direction back towards home and across the footbridge over Saxon Street. The group of students were gathered near the bridge and going down steps towards the bus stop on Saxon Street and they were shouting abuse at Carol. Then, as we got to the middle of the footbridge and looked down at the road, there was a boy running backwards and forwards across the road. There was fairly heavy traffic passing, including busses. It appeared as if the children were playing some sort of 'chicken' game and at one point one of them, a boy whom Carol knew from teaching him, looked as if he was very nearly run into by a passing car. When we got home Carol telephoned someone at the Academy telling them about the incident with the man entering the campus as well as the 'chicken' game the children were playing in the road. Apparently the abusive behaviour was caught on the C.C.T.V. cameras and would have been recorded. The 'chicken' behaviour was definitely a safety issue and if it was ignored there could be a fatal accident. Further round, on   Chaffron Way there is a small model lighthouse at the side of the road, with plastic flowers on it, and I had wondered what it was there for. People leave flowers and messages at the site of fatal accidents as a sort of memorial. Carol told me this was where a child from the Frank Markham school (the school she worked at before the Academy replaced it around 18 months ago) was run over and killed because he attempted to cross the road. There are perfectly good under-passes and footbridges across these roads around Milton Keynes, so there is absolutely no need to cross the busy grid roads at all.