Middle-aged ladies in Tunbridge Wells sometimes 'pack' dangerously and have to be herded with Land-Rovers. Those on the outskirts of the pack tend to be made anxious and are likely to kick sideways like steer.
In an earlier time, people were bemused by the middle-aged ladies and the trampling, but nowadays passers-by are more likely to be seized with impatience and they funnel and hurry-on the ladies by wielding black umbrellas.
Tunbridge Wells is fortunate in being surrounded by a rural England that 'time forgot', a landscape of church spires and loaf-of-bread haystacks, and it is towards this idyll that the middle-aged ladies are steered, eventually bursting from one of the town's many charming lanes into some pleasant meadow 'all in a rush'.
Whereupon the collective seems to give way to the individual once more. The ladies appear confused and wander aimlessly for a bit, a silence settles over the herd, and eventually a few of the wilder ones begin their tramp back up the charming lanes and a slow return commences - completely unobserved I might add, for by now the townsfolk have soon forgotten them.
The phenomenon must not become a cheap tourist attraction. If anything it is nearer to a medical matter and probably should be viewed in that light.
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