Four And A Half

A bare room in the bus depot and I sit on a bench

Standing in front of me is a bored teenager

No more than seventeen

He wears a military uniform

He's playing a game with no words

Listening carefully to music on his iPod

He casually waves a loaded rifle round the room

Pointing it first at a wall

Then straight into my face

Then out of the window

Targeting a succession of passers by

When I was his age and drunk on holiday in Italy

Me and some local lads got into an argument with the police

It grew heated

One of the lads hit a young cop

We all ran away, laughing

Suddenly

Bullets from an automatic began thudding into the wall above our heads

I dived through a doorway

A whole family, sitting around their dinner table, mid meal

Glanced up to see me, a mad Englishman

Sauntering drunkenly past them through their kitchen and away

Years later, touring America with a couple of punk bands

A cop stopped us after midnight on a beach somewhere in Los Angeles

He told us to take our hands out of our pockets

When I didn't, he pulled out a gun and stuck it against my head

I got angry, or is arrogant a better word?

Anyway, I refused, saying

I'm English and I'm not used to cops with guns

Ask me nicely

Take your f###ing hands out of your f###ing pockets now!

He said

Motionless, I stared back at him

Just do it, Nick

Said my friends

So I shrugged and held up my hands

Turning to the others, the cop told them

I didn't know if he had a gun

I wasn't gonna wait and see

Then, addressing me, he added

You're lucky

I was counting to five before pulling the trigger

I'd got to four and a half

I'd got to four and a half