Excitement in our street!

Glenn had gone off on his bike for the newspaper at 7am, I was catching up on sleep after a late night chatting with our visitors.   Suddenly, I was awoken by at least 12 large bangs.   I thought they were firecrackers, but they seemed louder than usual.  I heard a few words and then silence.  

Glenn came in a few minutes later and sat on the bed looking very shaken.   He'd had to ride past a body of a middle-aged man lying in the middle of the road with three large bullet wounds in his back, his bicycle dropped to the ground by his side, just a block from our house.  It was on the corner of a state school, the students had fortunately started at 7.00 am.   At that stage Glenn said, there were only a couple of taxis stopped nearby and a dozen people standing watching.  Even a mother came with her young child  to see the action.

The crowd gathered.

From our kitchen window, we could see the crowds coming from nowhere, people clambering to get a better view, others just standing watching.  Kids came from the school close by, the secretary and most of the early morning teachers from our school went to join the excitement.  An hour after the shots, the uncovered body was still lying on the ground, . The police finally arrived to divert the traffic.   Two hours later the body was finally removed and life was back to normal.

The nature strip outside our house.

While all this was going on, there was a rattle on our gate.   A scruffy looking man with a machete hanging loosely by his side, had seen our nature strip.   He offered to cut our grass, for a small fee of course!