The last time I went out in the city centre, I was about 12 and I ended up singing songs off of rathergood.com to one of the ladies in Angels.

But the main reason I don't go out in this city is because of what it's becoming. London, Cambridge, Stamford, Leeds, Manchester – all fantastic nights, with or without the variety.

A night in Peterborough concludes with grotesquely obese women in sparkly green hats getting off with each other outside of that fried chicken place on Broadway, and a couple of charvers having a go at being Rambo, with everyone in Edwards looking on.

And now it's getting worse. Unprovoked violence in this city is one thing, but last weekend saw a cold-blooded murder on the embankment.

Piotr Bielicki (25) was severely beaten on Saturday night, after leaving a party nearby some 45 minutes earlier. He was found by friends and taken to hospital, where he later died of internal bleeding.

Police say there was nothing to suggest a motive for the attack. So what is it coming to when we can no longer walk in an open public space in our own city without fear of being murdered?

When my kid brother started going out in the city centre the odd night, my mother worried that "he'd be killed." He called her daft, I laughed until I had an asthma attack, and now, disturbingly, it seems she had rightful cause for concern.

The city I live in used to be sleepy – boring at best. My garden backs on to a field so, in the summer, we have cows and horses and, in the winter, it floods and we have swans and idiots in blow-up dinghy boats.

Anyway, being "summer" and all, we're supposed to have the cows. Only, they've been moved to another field because some sick and twisted joker decided to batter one of the calves and sever its ear and tail two weeks ago. The calf died.

I jog in that field. We walk our dog there. But I haven't been in it since, because people as evil and screwed as the killer clearly don't give a toss about ethics and humanity – they're psychologically tapped and dangerous.

It's a sad sign of the times that the stuff you read about in the papers or see on TV – the type of news usually reserved for the larger, more established cities – is now happening on our own doorstep.
And it's this kind of threat that requires a little more than vigilance and a personal alarm.

What do you think? Are Jenna's comments of how she sees life in Peterborough a little over the top or do you agree?
Let us know by e-mailing eteditor@peterboroughtoday.co.uk or comment below