Nothing says You’re in Scotland now like a complete stranger threatening you with a bat because he wants a fight

For once, I’m not just linking to and writing some thoughts on something that’s happened to someone else. That’s right, folks, this is first hand reporting.

A couple of kids threw a handful of stones at our car as we were driving past them to The Newhouse for an after-dinner coffee. Neil decided to turn around (he told me later it’s because he saw another car stop and thought they were confronting the stone-throwers), so we did a 180, and he yelled at the blokes, they yelled back (the first one being the stone-thrower, IMHO), one came towards us with what I thought was a baseball bat (on reflection, they don’t play baseball here, do they?), and by our psychic connection*, I knew Neil decided it wasn’t worth it, and he stepped on the accelerator. So they threw something at the windscreen (possibly the bat), but it bounced off.

These were kids, about 16? 18?

When we got to The Newhouse, we stopped to fill up with diesel (there’s a filling station next door) and I asked the shop’s proprietor for the number of the local police station. Neil then called and outlined our recent excitement, and we agreed (over coffee at The Newhouse, we weren’t about to let a few idiots spoil our detailed plan for the evening) not to tell his mother, as she is the, er, anxious type.

I also opined that the other car had been waiting for someone to react to the kids throwing the stones, i.e. it was all a trap, a set up by bored teenagers who think beating strangers up is a valid weeknight recreational activity (weekends they’d probably beat people up at football matches if they can afford the ticket). I’m a bit of a ‘glass is half-full’ type when ‘exciting in a bad way’ things happen.

We didn’t think anything else would be done, so we got home (after driving past again and confirming, between us, where it had happened) and I got ready for bed — then there was a knock on the front door at about half-past ten (I was looking at our Ikea catalogue, again, at the time), and lo and behold, a couple of police officers were here to take our statements!

(Which kind of laid waste to our attempt to keep it from Neil’s mum.)

One of the policemen and I sat down in the living room while Neil and the other were in the kitchen. He asked me to outline what had happened, and then went through it in detail as my statement. It’s amazing how slow the whole ‘incident’ sounds when it’s written down, and it made me feel that I am super-unobservant. What I remembered most was the bat, and the hair colour of the ned who wielded it (dark blonde with highlighted chunks in the fringe).

I remarked that I had thought to try and note the licence plate number (couldn’t even remember what kind it was, except that it was small and white, although I’ve never been the best at identifying makes and models at the best of times) after I noticed the bat, but we were going by too fast and I couldn’t see it.

To which Neil’s mum (who had been listening very intently to my statement, no doubt trying to remember as much as she could to recount in lurid detail to her friends — don’t we love small towns) piped up with a smile, “You watch too much CSI!”

I will remember this incident as the one where my in-depth training by watching too many episodes of a fictional forensic investigation team based in Las Vegas, Nevada, failed me (and the Strathclyde Police).

* I’m joking. Doesn’t take a psychic to work out what he was thinking.

• 29 Aug 2007

• Thinking