by Clarkson Wroe

Created on: April 21, 2008

YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE HAVING A BAD DAY - WHEN YOU GET SHOT BEFORE LUNCH!

As I passed through the security checks at both Doncaster Airport in the UK and Faro Airport in Portugal, on my recent holiday, the alarms went off. Obviously my worldly positions, phone, watch, belt, coinage and anything else remotely metallic were already sat neatly in a plastic tray so the security staff, with more good humour in the Algarve than in South Yorkshire, it has to be said, methodically checked over my boots, shirt and jeans. They tousled my hair, either in a touching display of fondness or perhaps to see if it contained a weapon of some kind, I prefer to think the former, and then shrugged and sent me on my way.

Now I could have explained that it may have been the piece of metal embedded in my right leg, the result of a shooting incident, that caused the machines to react, but that could have labelled me as a possible undesirable and delayed me getting to duty free.

This foreign body in my right calf is there because some years ago my wife was doing some work in Skipton, a pretty little market town in North Yorkshire that advertises itself as "The Gateway to the Dales"; we in our household now refer to it as "The Badlands". It was a Friday shortly before Christmas and Spicer's wife had ordered him some state of the art DVD player from a store in the afore said town and asked us if we would mind collecting it as we were going there anyway. My wife went into the store to sort out the paperwork and I went to collect our car from its parking place. As I walked past a public house called The Cross Keys' I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my lower right leg. Now strangely, as it had never happened to me before, I knew immediately that I had been shot and screamed this fact out to an old couple who were walking by. I assume that she fainted not through my language but the sight of my blood. Having ascertained that there was no more lead flying in my direction I took out my mobile, propped my self against a wall and called the police.
"Right Sir you say that you have been shot" said a very polite voice on the other end of the line.
"Yes officer" I replied equally politely, just as my mother had brought me up.
"Right could you bob round to the station and report it" says he,
"No officer I suggest you come to me!" says I, this time perhaps a tad less polite.
"Right Sir good idea. We'll have someone there shortly" he concluded
And bless them they did.

It was obvious that the shot had come from

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