I am writing to advise of two separate instances I have encountered at the bottom of St James's Street over the past couple of weekends.

Two Fridays ago I was approached by a group of five teenage boys looking for a fight.

One of them attempted to headbutt me. He then proceeded to snap a wooden plank from a newspaper display stand outside a late-night store and wave it in my face, threatening to hit me with it.

I stood my ground and they eventually got bored and moved on.

While this was happening, a police van slowly drove across St James's Street yards from where I was standing surrounded by these boys but failed to stop.

Last Friday I was walking down St James's Street with a can of beer. I was stopped by a police officer in a car who, in a wonderfully authoritarian manner, informed me I was breaking the law through illegal street drinking and confiscated the beer.

It was then that I realised I was standing in exactly the same spot where the teenage boys had tried to provoke me into a fight a couple of weeks ago.

It gladdened me that in an area renowned locally for violent street attacks, drug use, homophobic assaults and general anti-social behaviour that the effort was made by the officers in blue to prevent me from finishing half a can of beer.

I have written to you as a means to thank the police for intervening on such a serious issue.

After all, if the very worst had happened, I might have been tipsy in public.

-Neil Farrow, Hove