MIKE Priestley, North of Watford. Try as I might to find upbeat things to say about Bradford (and I really do try, because I feel I owe it to the city that's been home to generations of Priestleys), this has been one of the weeks when I've had to admit defeat.

School holidays are never a good time to venture out into the city centre. There are lots of families trailing about eating fast foods. The amount of litter dropped on the pavements doubles and triples. And there are intimidating gangs of youths strutting about the place, not caring who is in their way.

Add that lot to the usual gauntlet run by those who venture into the streets of Bradford on a daily basis - of countless Big Issue sellers, dubious people with clipboards seeking funds for obscure overseas welfare work, and well-nourished beggars sitting in doorways chanting their mantra of "Spare some change for a cup of tea?" at every passer-by.

Is it any wonder that those people who have decent amounts of money to spend take it to somewhere they feel less harassed, and that there are empty shops in so many of Bradford's main shopping streets?

My depression over all this was aggravated the other day, during lunchtime errands around the city centre, by a group of youths in a car who were driving around the streets with loud and appalling music playing on the sound system and all the windows wound down for maximum annoyance.

Round and round they drove. You could hear them coming a street away. They passed me four times - and on the fourth occasion, as they pulled up at traffic lights next to where I was walking, their car shaking with the vibration from the speakers, I have to admit that I longed for the time when I manage to perfect the atomising zap gun that I'm working on in the attic at Priestley Towers. When a normally peaceful, kindly soul like me is seized by such murderous thoughts, something is badly wrong. Maybe wrong with me. That possibility can't be ignored. But I think wrong with Bradford, too.

What happened to the place that I used to think of always with pride and affection? Sometimes now, on certain days when I've mislaid my rose-tinted spectacles and my defences are down, I find it hard to recognise.

We've both changed, and we simply don't gel like we used to.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.