de cucullo fringillae...

No substantial holy week posts here, although it is Holy Saturday and although a good amount of my scholarly attention as of late has been paid to liturgies of the Triduum.

Much more urgently:

I'VE BEEN SHOT.

This afternoon a child shot a suction-cup arrow at my window. He had gotten the arrow, along with a bow, from the gift store at The Tales of Robin Hood, which ranks third in my list of 'Creepy Things One Must Walk By To Get To My Current Residence,' after the mannequin children in the school-uniform shop(pe) and the Britannia Hotel, which is unsettling to me for reasons I have not yet been able to formulate precisely.

I cannot know for certain whether or why this child was aiming for me. I think it reasonable, however, to imagine that the incident was motivated out of xenophobia. It is difficult to live as a sojourner in a country, and more particularly in a county, in which the violent acts of the past are so baldly glorified to children.

Thankfully nobody was hurt; I had the good sense to have closed my window. But the next time somebody wants to use the UK as an example of a society made safer by their anti-gun laws, you can be sure I shall cite this instance as a counter-example.