Image: Peter G Trimming, Croydon
It would be trite and untrue to suggest the worst thing that happens on the streets of France is that very French thing of not obeying one-way markings in car parks. There were, after all, serious riots all over the country in 2005.
But it was straight back to France that I wanted to go as I emerged from Ealing Broadway station, not long before they closed it, to be greeted by a daughter who had driven past gangs of hoodies on her way to pick us up.
As we headed to her car, parked in a "safe" street north of the station, a police van screeched to a halt beside us.
An officer, spotting us trailing suitcases and toddler, yelled: "Go home now."
We took a very long roundabout route. Later reports suggested this was a wise move. The centre of Ealing is said to be ablaze, looting is widespread and people's homes have been invaded by mobs.
Hoodlums, thugs, toe rags ... call them what you will.
One Sky News correspondent, reporting from another London district in what were admittedly tense conditions, kept referring to protesters. His lapse was excusable but someone in the comfort of the studios ought to have had a quiet word in his ear. Another man from Sky, in Clapham, uttered the word, too, but quickly corrected himself and described rioters as rioters.
Having seen this kind of thing in Paris, I am a great believer in the French tactic of sending in snatch squads to grab the louts doing the worst damage and then hoping the courts will inflict hefty, exemplary sentences.
But please don't lecture me on heavy handed police up against "protesters" with, frankly, no issue to protest about. Mark Duggan, shot dead by police last week in the spark for the Tottenham riots, may have been a model of innocence or a crack-dealing gangster, but the truth of his life and death matter very little to the mobs looting homes and shops and setting fire to cars.
We are dealing with a young generation that is beyond the control of anyone.
Parents either do not care or feel powerless to intervene. The police, it has become clear tonight, are insufficiently resourced or trained to deal with a spread of rioting on this scale. Britain being Britain, we cannot even rely on it to rain when we need it.
I am going to bed with a poker by my side.
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Morning-after update: no need to use the poker, but this is Ealing today, a few minutes on foot from the Ealing Studios and the battered Broadway shopping centre.
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