Bury Fen had to be frozen enough for a proper race-course to be marked out and smoothed over. Hitting a bump at 20mph hurts, and the slide is long.They used to nail posters to trees or telegraph the champion racers. Mobile phones and the internet make it easier to organise a meeting, but the weather is more unpredictable than ever. Yesterday’s races were called off when the ice began to thaw, leaving the surface rutted and wet “It’s not over yet,” said a disappointed Mr Warrington “The forecast is for another freeze That’s the thing with fen skating, see You never can tell.”. With its pound shops and kebab houses, its estate agents and pubs, Upper and Lower Clapton Road in east London could be any other busy street in any other city in the UK. Except that in the past two years, eight men have been reported shot dead either in the street or in the leafy avenues running off it. The sound of gunfire and the accompanying whine of an ambulance or police car is never far away.

Nerves are beginning to fray, even among aspiring locals living in well-secured £350,000 houses close by.Their fears are shared to some degree in towns and cities around the UK. This has been a terrible week for violent crime in Britain, ushering in a grim new year and a growing feeling that crime is spiralling out of control.As the year drew to a close last Sunday, Kevin Jackson, a father of two, was stabbed in the head and killed in Halifax, West Yorkshire. On Tuesday, a teenaged girl was shot in the head by a mugger who stole her mobile phone; that followed the armed hold-up of a 10-year-old boy in south London for his mobile phone and £25 spending money.Those headlines have helped to crank up the dread of becoming an innocent victim of crime In Hackney, however, that fear has become a sad reality. Take the past week.On Tuesday, a DJ was shot in the head after a row broke out at a New Year’s Eve party. The bullet passed through his neck and through a partition wall, killing a second man. The same evening, a 32-year-old was rushed to hospital with blood gushing from his foot where he had shot himself in excitement at another Hackney nightclub 10 minutes from the Lower and Upper Clapton Road.Earlier in the week, Hackney police found a man bludgeoned to death in his flat a few hundred yards from the Lower Clapton Road.”Hackney is hot right now,” said the cab driver as we passed the scene of the latest violence At 2am yesterday all was peaceful “We’ve had, what, seven shootings in seven days It’s crazy.

All the kids are staying away – that’s why it’s so quiet.”There are guns all over Hackney. Even in the cab they have ways of letting you know they are carrying something One guy told me he was carrying a ’small weapon’. He opened his briefcase and at the bottom was a machine gun.”At a restaurant on the Lower Clapton Road on Friday night, the owner, not wishing to be named for fear of reprisals, is plainly alarmed.”You should live here Then you would see what it is like. A couple of days ago we were closed but three men were banging on the door trying to get in. There was a car parked outside and the driver showed his gun before driving off. The three men were running from him.”Things have got to change. If they don’t, then in two generations’ time no one will be able to stop them Even now 14-year-old kids come in at 4am.