Meet Teresa. She was mugged - but she's not going to let it beat her.

This is Teresa Blick. I spoke to her today and was struck how lovely she was.

She was mugged last month and, bravely in my opinion, decided to speak to us about it.

She was walking home from the shops in Queens Road, Clarendon Park when she was literally jumped by a young thug.

He, for his troubles, walked away with a fiver.

I'm sure that's long gone. Into his arm presumably.

Teresa, who's 65 and a widow, struggled in the first few weeks after the attack.

She just didn't feel safe going out because of what this man had done to her.

Well, on a positive note, Teresa's attitude today seemed to be one of defiance.

"I'm not going to let this turn me into a recluse", she told me.

Good on her.

After all, people like Age Concern and Victim Support have told me down the years that crimes like this kill people.

Not instantly, but slowly as the victim withdraws from life and loses the confidence to be out in public.

There's only one thing outstanding.

When he took Teresa's purse our big man also took three photos of her grandchildren - who live miles away in the North East - and a mass card for a dear friend who died two years ago.

How can we get them back for her?

Seriously, if you live in the Montague Road area of Clarendon Park, check your gardens, alleyways and the like for a discarded purse, photos or a mass card.

It's a slim hope, but it's worth making the point.

My 50th post. This had better be good.

It's been a busy week, but I haven't got much to show for it.

On the plus side, Chief Supt Rob Nixon - the city's senior officer - sent a letter to the bosses to thank us for our coverage of the David Robinson story.

I've covered David's story at length on this site.

I'd suggest you go back a page or two and read the posts if you haven't done so before. Make a donation too, maybe?

On the news front, I learned a new word - clonking.

It came up in conversation with a woman I was talking to about an assault in Western Road. The allegation is that a couple of fellas attacked a man with baseball bats.

She said she saw it happening and described the sound of the bats' impact as 'clonking'.

I thought she'd made it up, but I checked the dictionary and there it was: "A thudding noise."

Another tale this week pointed out that one of our psychiatric units has been losing patients - mostly only for a few hours, admittedly - at an alarming rate.

Bosses at the Brandon Unit, at Leicester General Hospital tell us things are going to improve and when they take people out for a ciggie they'll count them out and count them back in again.

On the small beer, but still thuggish side of life, we ran a few lines about a man - and what a man - who threw a traffic cone at a passing car in Ratby.

Surely there are better things to do in the villages.

Not really sure what I'll be up to next week.

However, I'd be made up to hear from anyone who can tell me more about Romanian prostitutes sleeping under canvas in Abbey Park.

Congratulations to David and Almina - and say hello to Amelia.

I've said before that some stories are a lot harder to write than others.

Over the past couple of months I've struggled with the stories I've filed about David Robinson.

He's a young police officer in the city who has cancer.

The tumours are incurable, according to doctors.

David needs to raise £100,000 to undergo experimental treatment in the US which he hopes will give him as much time as possible with his wife, Almina and their very new daughter, Amelia.

His colleagues at Mansfield House station have taken up the challenge of getting him on that plane to the US and they have been an inspiration.

It goes without saying, the couple's friends and family are doing exactly the same.

A couple of months in and the total collected has just gone beyond £30,000. Amazing.

People's health is such a difficult subject, very emotional.

I'm also conscious a lot of people are reading these stories.

These are people who care deeply about David and his family as well as, in a lot of cases, those who deal with me on a daily basis.

I hate to get things wrong in print and I worry about getting something back to front in these stories.

Anyway, this is a picture of David and Almina with Amelia. She arrived on Monday, weighing in at a delicate 5lbs and 9ozs.

For the full story and all kinds of things you might need to know, search Facebook for 'help us help a friend' or go to:

http://www.davidleerobinson.co.uk

It's come to this - a strongly worded missive to the Telegraph.

Journalists are funny, picky creatures at times.

Most of us can be back-breakingly precious about the English language and how it's used.

We're like this because we should be.

I'm not above criticism for the errors I make, but I still make the bench for the fussy team.

I was reading an article on the Daily Telegraph's website today for a bit of background for something I was doing for the Merc.

I was astonished at the lack of care that had gone into its preparation for publication.

The words were all in the right order. In fact it was a good read.

But the punctuation was all over the place.

Anyway, I sent a quick e-mail to editorial at the Telegraph.

They may come back and say the punctuation went missing because of a technical glitch.

Or maybe, someone didn't know where to put their commas and apostrophes.

Despite my best efforts, my message ended up sounding like a fussy schoolma'am's end of term report on a must-try-harder pupil.

At least it was properly punctuated.

Beggars you say? Wearing gorilla suits?

Sadly there is no authentic 'as-it-happened' news picture to go with this one.

The man in the suit is a fun-runner picked from our picture archive.

Anyway, this is about the latest twist on the travelling eastern European criminal thing we've been covering for some time now.

They're implicated in things like purse-dipping, baby-in-your-face begging, shoplifting and hawking particularly nasty fake gold jewellery around the city centre.

The headline to this post pretty much sums up what they were up to in this case - they were dressed as gorillas and they were planning to hassle shoppers for money.

I was walking through town heading for the office when I bumped into some police officers having their pic taken for an advert that's coming the Merc's way.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. All ad revenue is gratefully received.

As the group broke up I chased a police officer I wanted to speak to.

But no, he was off because he'd spotted a couple of people dressed in gorilla suits.

They were just sitting there in High Street and Humberstone Gate and he wanted to know who they were.

Because of the General Election I thought they were merry pranksters.

It became apparent though they were in town - from Manchester funnily enough, apparently the home town of the city's newest street girls - to ask shoppers if they wanted to pay for pics of their kids alongside men dressed in shabby suits.

It didn't sound like the smartest ruse for parting people with their money.

I have no idea if it would have been a winner because this pair had just arrived and hadn't got down to business when the police intervened.

Funnily enough, they didn't have a camera.

Anyway, the police told them the score and advised them to head out of town.

I've held off from writing the story because I'm desperate to get a pic of them in action.

But it looks like they've listened to the police and have gone back to Manchester.

I like odd stories - how often does a reporter get to write about beggars in fancy dress?

Not often.

How often does a reporter get to write an intro along the lines of "A shoplifter squeezed breast milk at a store detective..."?

Again, not often.

I had the pleasure of writing the above once. And I still remember it fondly.

I'm only human.