The world we live in

Oxford, England... The City Of Dreaming Spires (or something). Nice place to live, you'd think. Prestigious university at which both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien taught; the Bodleian Library; the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology; punting... Anyone who has seen Inspector Morse will know that even murder in Oxford is civilised.

But even the oldest and most respectable of cities have their scummy areas and my latest temp job happens to be on the edge of one such scummy area. Indeed, to get to and from work I have to ride a bus right through the arse-end of Oxford. It's as scummy as any city's scummy bits. It's a bleak sight to see every day.

But today was even better. Driving through the scummy arse-end of Oxford, the bus pulls up to a stop. There is an almighty pop! Everybody is startled and looks around - it sounds like something hit the bus. Then a young woman seated near the rear of the bus looks to the window beside her and quickly stands up. The glass in the frame is shattered. At the centre of the tiny shards is small hole, a bullet hole.

Someone had fired a gun at the bus.

The driver switched off the engine, called the bus depot to ask for advice and asked those who had been sitting close to the shattered window for their contact details. Everybody else, including me, got off the bus to catch the next one that had pulled up behind.

As I rode the bus the rest of the way into the city centre, I marvelled at what had just happened. Someone had fired a gun at us... a gun. Maybe if I lived London or Manchester or Birmingham I wouldn't have been so taken aback. Even though Oxford has it's dodgy suburbs like any other city it is still... well, Oxford.

On the other hand, even if you do live in a major town or city where such things happen every day, is it still a shock when you actually witness something like this at close quarters? I suddenly felt extremely depressed that this kind of occurence is not exceptional but the norm. Everybody who doesn't live a hermit's life in a remote cave is going to experience something like this at least once in their life no matter where they live. No matter how nice a place you inhabit, there will always be people who will come in and fuck it up.

As an addendum to getting shot at on a bus, the remainder of my journey home on foot was beset by an unusually high number of abusive drunkards and youths roaming the streets (ah, the school summer holidays), not to mention the pisshead who had passed out on the pavement outside the indian takeaway, his head resting in a puddle of lager from a dropped can. And this was as I passed into the "nice" bit of Oxford where I live.

I was going to say that some days it is hard not to despair for the human race but then I remember how lucky I am to not be living in Baghdad or Dafur. Everything is relative but, really, I can't complain.