Someone tried to shoot me today.

It's not all that uncommon in certain parts of London, Liverpool and Manchester for nutters to gun down members of the public but drive by shootings are still something of a rarity on the leafy streets of Edinburgh's suburbs. I was taking a stroll along a quiet street in the south side of the city this afternoon when I heard a noise that I've only ever heard in those films where John Wayne is hiding behind a rock while the injuns take pot-shots at him from the hills. This noise was followed by a screech of tyres as my would be assassins made their escape in a small red hatchback car. My finely honed survival instincts took over in a split second, although to the untrained eye it may have looked as though I was sobbing uncontrollably while I shat my pants.
A passer-by called the police and they later found a steel ball-bearing in the gutter which they think had been fired from an air rifle. They also informed me that had it hit me in the head I might have been killed.

Part of me thinks I'm very lucky to be alive but there's also a part of me that wishes I had been shot in the shoulder, leg or some other non-life threatening part of my body so that I could have a cool scar and make up stories about how brave I was and despite all the blood I kept insisting it was just a scratch.

The police seem to think that it was just the actions of some mindless twats but I've drawn up a list of people who I've pissed off and might want to have me killed. At the moment it's a pretty long list, about 29,000 names in fact but I'll most likely blame it on the missus in the end.

fatty

Funny thing is that if you kept the whole story as it is, but replaced Edinburgh with "São Paulo" or "Rio de Janeiro", you'd be celebrated as the new Émile Zola or win the Pulitzer Prize for "Best Embedded Reporting". Within a matter of days you'd receive a letter from one of the most prestigious Universities in the country, sponsored by the state just like almost everything else in Brazil, including my job, to lecture on the new trend of "Embedded Sociology". 

They'd take you to have a glance at some slums and you'd go back to the U.K with some frightening stories about a lawless bloody savage land. Of course, it wouldn't take a week before the Independent or the Guardian called you to write about it in a front-page column. 

Some people would frown at you and say that you were making up the facts. You'd stand proudly by what you wrote just to discover, much for your disgrace, that the editor of the journal had been thinking about sending you back to Brazil to do some further reporting. 

Next day you'd probably write an article explaining it had all been a misunderstanding and that your piece was more akin to literary journalism - that words as "rifle", "machine gun", "bazookas" and "grenades" were not to be taken literally: "rifle" or "machine gun" was just a generic metaphor for violence! "Children killed" meant that, because of lack of proper education, the nation's future was being nipped in the bud. The list with the "29.000" people who could have shot you was a keen play on the demographic data to express the thought that each destitute kid was a potential criminal - but you'd talk about free-will and how you didn't actually subscribe to sociological determinism. 

You tell me what would be the next stop in your career.

Christ, I thought this'd be a well crafted parody of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" or something.  That's an eye opener.
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[/QUOTE]I used to go through my city late at night without any worries but after seeing what happens to transit guards and bus drivers here, I've become a stay-at-home.  Fuck partying.[/QUOTE]

fatty:  I'll be in the UK at once or twice between now and the end of the year.  If it means that much to you, I can swing up to Edinburgh and administer some kind of cool scar for you, gratis.  Not that I'd want to inflict any pain or anything. I can catch a performance of WWRY while it's in town.  Oh, wait.  That would be inflicting pain on myself.

On the bright side, at least the police appear to have responded to your complaint this time.  Glad you're OK, and I hope it was a random event not to be repeated.  Holy cow, what's this world coming to?
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I have an alibi.

(just saying...you know)

Sheesh. Things like that never happen in New York. They fired a ball bearing? Ha. Amateurs.

Yikes.

well- glad you are ok, fatty!

Was it Leith Walk?

Oh no, wait. You said south.

fatty, what on earth have you done to piss off that many people??

Thats a quiet area too.

You want to come to Glasgow.

Air rifle, eh?  I used to play with one in my backyard as a kid. ;-)  Seriously, though..  Glad you are alright, fatty.

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[b]-fatty- wrote: [/b]



My finely honed survival instincts took over in a split second, although to the untrained eye it may have looked as though I was sobbing uncontrollably while I shat my pants.

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Clever.  Now nobody will know that you actually shat your pants!

Glad you're still with us.

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Maybe Britt was behind this pathetic attempt...