HIGH Wycombe is by no means perfect, but it is a good and reasonably safe place in which to live.

I state this after a spate of violent incidents which have left residents frightened and which have threatened to tarnish the reputation of the town.

In recent weeks, a pensioner has allegedly been murdered, a man has been shot and run over at a pub, and another man was left in a critical condition after, according to police, a car was driven at a group of people. All of these were unconnected but give the impression that Wycombe is a modern-day version of war-torn Beirut.

I'm aware that there are now a lot of bewildered and terrified people in this town wondering what on earth is going on. That's understandable, but it's worth stepping back and putting this all into some kind of perspective.

Until this spate began in May, there had only been one alleged murder here in the last year. Compare that with the nearby London boroughs of Ealing and Hillingdon. I also edit newspapers in these areas and my publications there are full of murder and mayhem on a weekly basis.

Covering south Bucks often seems like a church picnic in comparison.

But inevitably, there are going to be horrible instances of violence in a town the size of High Wycombe. And bizarrely, these things do tend to come in spates. At the end of summer last year, there was a worrying outbreak of unconnected cases which involved bloodshed. It prompted the Bucks Free Press to run with the controversial "Blood on the streets" headline as fears grew over the number of attacks.

But then it all went quiet again until now. I'm not pretending it's all sweetness and light in High Wycombe. And my sympathies go out to all victims of crime and their families. I do have some small first-hand knowledge of the subject having once been glassed and kicked in the head by a group of louts in Kentish Town, London, in an attack that could easily have killed me.

But I've been in High Wycombe for more than 15 years and I've always thought it was okay for a big town. I've drunk in its pubs, lived in its town centre and walked its streets at night. That's not to say nothing terrible will ever happen to me here; it's just that Wycombe is as good and bad as any other comparable large industrial town so close to London. I've also lived in supposedly genteel Windsor and I can tell you it's a lot rougher there.

Our newspapers will do our best to find out what happened in these recent incidents and householders have a right to be concerned and to demand assurances from police about their safety.

But I sincerely hope that none of this will cause lasting damage to the good name of a very decent town.