Who needs fantasy when we've got the grim reality?
So plans are in the crucible to build a multi-million pound medieval fantasy theme park on our doorstep.
But it all hangs in the balance unless a backer with 250,000 in his or her back pocket is found to create a mythical Dark Ages-style park featuring sieges, feasts and battles at Houghall, near Durham.
Look no further. We already have our very own in Sunderland – and it's free, unlike the medieval money-making park that would-be developer Orchestrator has dreamed up.
You just have to walk through The Bridges and you can journey through a world of non-humans as envisaged for this attraction.
Neanderthals are out in force thronging the malls, bringing the air of a medieval market place to rival Jorvik and turning it blue with their lingo.
Step outside into that once swish shopping street – Holmeside – and brace yourself for snouts in troughs eating as much as they want and hostelries inhabited by hardened drinkers at 9.30am knocking back the booze.
The grandeur that was Fawcett Street is now a sad vista of Greggs bags blowing in the breeze and bairns pushing bairns.
Pass Sunderland Magistrates court and you have to pick your way through the criminal throng, their spittle and obscenities.
Stroll up to Hylton Road and it's quite scary – a magnet for low-life and a sub-culture who weave their way round the second hand shops.
At St Peter's, bidding for world heritage status, the louts litter and foul up the area with their beer cans.
And over at Hylton Castle, once home to fighting barons, it's now under siege from hammer-wielding yobs, hacking chunks out of the stonework, setting fire to this 12th century ruin and leaving their mark in graffiti.
Reminiscent of the last days of Rome are Saturday nights in a city shamed by clubbers, spewing all over and wenches pulling each other's hair out in handfuls, with no reservations about glassing one another.
What a vomitarium.
Such affrays, bawdy and bad behaviour make headlines... if it ever gets to court. And it's happening all over.
The question remains: does shame and mortification touch the likes of drunken 21-year-old Cheryl Parker, who weed on the floor of a fish and chip shop – then did the same in the nick after being arrested?
"She removed her jeans and underwear to her ankles and urinated on the floor in front of staff and customers," Consett magistrates were told by prosecutor John Garside.
And then while in clink she did the same again, this time urinating on the floor and bedding of the cell.
Animals behave better.
And the law-abiding run the risk of the horrific lawlessness of louts like 20-year-old Andrew Dougherty, who stabbed a man nine times, leaving scissors embedded in his head – because he didn't have a cigarette.
His 51-year-old victim, Walter Scott, was knifed in the face, neck, head, back, shoulders and ear all for saying he didn't smoke and couldn't help him as he waited for a bus at the Wheatsheaf.
With more than enough for a modern day morality play, how have we reached this pitch – a once proud city that's pillaged and raped by a fast-breeding race called Chavs?
Email to a friend
Print this page- Sunderland striker Campbell fresh to face Middlesbrough
- Sunderland’s astonishing rise even surprising Martin O’Neill
- Middlesbrough 1 Sunderland 2 (aet): O’Neill relieved to avoid shoot-out lottery as Sessegnon wins it
- Martin O’Neill defends David Meyler after criticism from Tony Pulis
- Kieran Richardson says there is plenty more to come from James McClean
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Sunderland
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -3 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South west
