Tuesday 21st August 2007

Today largely comprised being dragged around behind a speedboat on a variety of entertainingly-shaped floats whilst looking after a few disabled young adults who were into that kind of thing. But it wasn’t cornering at ridiculous speed on an inflatable sofa which was the most unexpected thing to happen today.

We were being supervised by a load of guys in wetsuits. A few of them were Scottish, and I got chatting to one in particular whilst we careered around the lake on an oval three-man float. He was a lovely chap, clean-cut, friendly, affable and sweet, exactly the kind of nice young man you might hope would be helping disabled people experience watersports.

I picked up as the morning progressed that he and the other Scottish guys were in the Army. I’d seen some other squaddies about the place helping out, and it all seemed to fit in with the smart haircut and the bizarrely high concentration of Jocks.

It transpired that the Scots were ardent nationalist SNP voters, but, given that they were in the Army, I thought that a bit of patriotism was probably excusable—even if it was the kind of patriotism that, at one point in the conversation, seemed to excuse use of broken bottles and stones in close combat as long as your assailant isn’t Scottish. But they’re joking, right? This is ironic nationalism. It must be. Anyway, a disabled water sports trip might not be the best place to start an argument with some Scottish squaddies about what precisely the SNP plan to do when the North Sea oil dries up, young and not too ’ard-looking though they were.

We got chatting. I asked him where they were stationed.

‘Germany,’ he said. The lake we were at was a long way from Germany, being as it was in the south of England.

‘So, what are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘We’re with MCTC.’

‘Sorry, that means nothing to me!’ I said.

’Military Corrective Training Centre—it’s a prison.’

‘So,’ I quipped, ‘You’re all prisoners, then?’

Heh heh. I am so funny.

‘Yeah,’ he responded, obviously playing along with my highly entertaining joke. They must be prison guards or something, right? They don’t let inmates supervise disabled children, do they?

Time passes some more. I overhear the Army boys chatting, and come to the conclusion that, heh heh, these guys actually are prisoners. A little more eavesdropping concludes that they’re here for twelve months’ penal servitude and then they’ll be discharged.

We got chatting again. ‘So, what you in for?’ I asked.

‘Drive-by shootin’,’ responded the cheery Scotsman.

My jaw probably dropped slightly at this point.

‘Ah, don’t worry,’ he said in that jovial Scottish tone that one ham-acting the part might follow with the word ‘laddie’, ‘We used blanks.

‘I’ve never seen so many Muslims hit the ground so fast.’

…

…

Long pause. Nervous laugh. Possibly some platitude about how that must’ve been quite funny. I can’t really remember. I think I escaped without expressing too much astonishment or abhorrence, which was sufficiently cowardly to stop me getting a broken bottle and some stones in the face. But, even after this appalling evidence of incomprehensible hatred towards a subset of his fellow man, I found it rather hard to believe that this nice young man could be capable of doing me over anyway.

I still wonder if I misheard it. It wasn’t exactly the kind of comment you could ask someone to say again. ‘Uh, sorry, did you just say Muslims? No? That’ll be me accusing you of being a racist bigot, then. And, to be honest, someone who thinks a fake drive-by is funny, even one which isn’t religiously motivated, is probably not the best person to accuse of being a bigot, right? Shit. Ow. Stop beating me to a bloody pulp with that giant inflatable sofa.’

But could I have misheard it? I can’t actually think of any words which sound like ‘Muslims’. Maybe it was Scotch slang. Maybe it was a particularly thick part of his accent. Maybe I’m particularly thick at hearing.

A few news searches didn’t seem to turn up much, but I’m not sure it would make the news, and it’s not like I’ve got much to go on.

The problem with this as a story is that the punchline is ‘I’ve never seen so many Muslims hit the ground so fast,’ and there’s no particularly satisfying conclusion. Either I heard it right, and society and human nature are slightly shitter than I had first thought, or I misheard the entire thing due to some hilarious Scottishness misunderstanding and they actually went for a drive-thru and dropped all their McMuffins.

I spent the rest of the day faintly unable to believe it was the former.

 

Comments

  1. Dan says (21:39 06/07/2009)

    Ah, happy memories
    that was AMAZING

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