One Bad Day

I think it was last Thursday (I'm a bit confused about days at the moment) when I went to get a book from the Library. As I was in Selly Oak, near the university, I thought I might as well give Subway a try as I hadn't been there at all since starting here in September. (I'll have to give a report on all the fast food establishments on Bristol Rd. one of these days, there are probably more per metre than even Dunmurry)

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Anyway, I was sat there eating my sandwich thingy, minding my own business, when four youngish lads came in, I'd say about 14-15yrs, none of them was very big, each one was a bit smaller than me probably. The strange thing was that they didn't order any food they just sat on two tables and tried to chat-up one of the girls in the queue. When the girl left they stayed there and didn't really do anything, they didn't even speak much. When it seemed like about 30 seconds had passed without any of them speaking I glanced over. None of them was doing anything but it seemed that my glance gave them the impetus to speak again.

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Above the head of one of them was a poster that caught my attention, I think it read 'Charity Christmas Choro'. The fact that it was handwritten made me do a double, or triple, take because I didn't recognise the word 'choro'. 'Chord' might have made sense, in as much as it's a real word, and a capital 'd' might look like a capital 'o' but it doesn't make any real sense. Anyway, I guess 'choro' must be a 'street' way of saying 'choir' or 'choral'. Obviously, my grammatical curiosity is a weakness.

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So, two of the lads left, the one with the poster above his head and the other one at his table. And as he stood he pointed at me and said something like, 'If you look at me again, I'll break/hit/punch your nose'. I just looked at him incredulously and said 'what?', with an incredulous tone. Of course, facial expressions and vocal tones are not easy for me so I don't know how successful I was in conveying the emotion.

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I suspect it was convenient for him to say it as he left, as it meant I couldn't very easily call his bluff without abandoning my sandwich and following him through the door. It was convenient for me too because I didn't want to be sat there scared to look in his direction.

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I found it vaguely amusing but as I made my way home I found a latent anger stirring up, possibly a hangover from when my car was stolen, and stolen again. I might have thought he was the same kind of person who would have done such a thing, and projected my anger onto him. I imagined what might have happened if things had gone wrong. I pictured myself grabbing him by the throat, pinning him to the wall and yelling, 'you're scum, do you know that?' Part of me would like to do that, it's not really very Christian is it? Anyway, even if I were able to do that, the fact that he had three frineds with him suggests that if things got violent I'd be the one waking up in a pool of blood, so I'm glad things didn't go that way. And I would almost certainly be done for ABH if I had been inspired by the many kung-fu films I've seen in the last twelve months.

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When I got home I thought I would get some work done for my essay, only to find my computer telling me I'd got a virus. (I mean, my computer was telling me that it had got a virus, not me technically) I hadn't got a virus killer on my machine, so I had to find a free one to download while random pop-ups appeared with alarming frequency. Most of the virus killers that are free to download only scan your system and tell you what viruses you have, if you want to go a step further and actually remove the viruses, you have to pay them. Anyway, it was the next day before I found one one a 30 day free trial, so I did eventually remove the numerous infections - each scanner found a different number - and finally got myself ready to work again but I'd lost about a day's worth of study and I was already behind.

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Still, I'll tell you about Friday evening later.