Crap Protection Racket
While on a school trip in Barcelona (Ha! School trip my arse! The teachers spent most of the time in various pubs, leaving us totally unsupervised. But that's a story for another time.) Back to relevant matters, we spent a happy week of larking around, pestering the locals and purchasing things no English shopkeeper would dream of selling us. On the last day we had nothing to do except wait for the coach to show up, so passed the time by walking around the street in small groups.

On one such walk, myself and a couple of mates were stopped by a stranger who, friendly enough, started chatting to us "You're from England?" "You here on trip, yes?" and so on. He then started warning us about the criminal element in Barcelona, telling us about all the dangerous people around. But, he said, we could be safe! All it took was for some money to pass from our hands to his, and he would put the word out amongst his criminal chums that we were not to be touched.

After several attempts to get it into his head that this was our last day, ("Look, in less than an hour we'll all be hopping on a coach and going home. We haven't been the victims of any crime all week, and we don't really need to pay protection money now") I gave up, mentally classified him under 'idiotic foreigner' and strolled off, muttering something along the lines of "You two talk to him, he's too stupid to understand me".

A few minutes later I was standing in the hotel lobby sipping a drink when another mate shows up.
"Where're Steve and Coleman?" says he.
"They were talking to some local cretin when I left them" I replied.

So we strolled back into the street, and sure enough there they were, still standing in front of this feller, stammering words to him. Me and Jamie joined them.
"Oh God, you're not still talking to this feller are you? Just tell him to bugger off" I instructed them.
The chap was clearly getting quite agitated now, downright demanding that Steve and Coleman give him money. We were saved at this point by Laurence, another member of our group 6ft tall and nearly as wide across the shoulders, who arrived and, catching the drift of what was going on, told the man that we didn't have any money in increasinly raised tones until he eventually backed off.

After he had gone, I turned to the others.
"Why didn;t you just tell him to sod off, or just walk off yourselves?" I asked.
"Because he had a bag full of needles and was threatening us" they replied.
"Really?" was my shocked response. For indeed, while they had noticed the slightly crazed look in his eyes and the bag full of hypodermics, I hadn't and had thought the feller was just a money-seeking nutter who would go away if ignored, rather than the drugged-up and potentially murderous mugger that he was.

In short, while my friends were being mugged, I responded to the mugger with all the tact of a colonial British Major, then left them to be threatened with a used needle-stabbing while I went to get a drink.

Apologies for excessive length, but it is one of my favourite stories.
(Uncle Comrade, Wed 21 Jun 2006, 13:50, Reply)