DEATH ON THE DOORSTEP.

Byline: Dan O'Neill

A WEEK since Amie Miles was gunned down - that single shot an awful echo of Jill Dando's fate on her doorstep - and the people of Grangetown still can't quite believe that, yes, it did happen here.

But not the killing itself. In today's society the fear of death on your own doorstep haunts many. The shock was in the fact that the gun came to Grangetown. And killed. Yet for some it was simply a matter of time.

``How could it happen?'' one woman asked her streetwise son. ``Mam, you don't realise. When you're tucked up in bed, there's a different way of life out there.''

Well, I've watched Grangetown slump into seediness over the years. I recall shopkeepers on Clare Road telling me that no insurance company would look at them, so frequent were the break-ins, the thefts. And this week their predictions looked fulfilled. Only a couple of those who were in trouble are left in what was once the prime shopping area, our very own little Queen Street.

Now, sign of the times, every shop has a massive steel shutter slammed down. While some are completely boarded up and deserted.

Grangetown, though, simply reflects the state of the nation. We had crime in Grangetown when I was a kid - but all I remember is one burglary, one car theft.

The car thief, a teenager with an appetite for Hollywood's gangster movies, replied in court when asked why, in a Cagney accent: ``I guess I was a mug.'' The court blamed the influence of those Yank films. What do we blame today?

There are still plenty of streets like Merches Gardens whose residents have battled against the tide that seems to have swamped most of the places where I played as a kid.

That's where they started a ``Streetwatch'' patrol at nights, mainly to get rid of the prostitutes infesting the place. Prostitutes? Working Merches Gardens?

That would have been as unimaginable not too long ago as a UFO landing in those same gardens.

The impression now is one of neglect, of drabness: this is not the Grangetown I remember. In 1941 bombs fell on Grangetown - almost 40 men, women and children died in a single house not far from Holmesdale Street. All cleared up, now, of course. But there are some areas which look as though the clearing up was never done.

The back lanes are piled high with junk and have been for months. Even the park, Grange Gardens, once the community's jewel, is filled with fluttering rubbish. No one seems to care. For me the most dramatic proof that times have changed came when the lady in St Patrick's Church told me proudly that the doors are left open between 9am and 9pm - on Wednesdays. They are bolted the rest of the week for fear of thieves or, perhaps, desecration. Those doors were always open - once.

The police presence has been heavy over the past week. But ask old residents and they tell you that it takes a killing to bring `em in. Once there were foot patrols all through the day and night, real community coppers before the phrase was invented. No longer.

Community. That's the word.

That's what seems to be missing in Grangetown these days. The area seems to have been fragmented into different communities, different cultures.