Shades of Grey

When I was working in Norway back in 1981, my desk was initially in a former shop premises near the Harbour in Stavanger. It had blinds at the windows so it was fairly private, although my desk was closest to the shop door.

One early evening, I was working a little late and was the only one left in the office. As it was still early in the year, the sun had already set. I was suddenly startled to hear a huge bang and looking up, saw a hole in the window above the door. The air was acrid with a gunpowder small and on the carpet near my desk was a shell case.

F*ck me! I thought, someone is using us as target practice. I immediately picked up my phone and rang 2222, the emergency number that rang in the switchboard room on the red phone. It was quickly answered by Gro, the switchboard supervisor who I knew fairly well, having had a few meetings with her about the new phone system (which was my reason for being there in the first place). I told her what happened and her first reaction was to assume I was joking. I assured her it was not and she contacted the authorities.

The police were there very quickly and took stock of the situation. They then scoured the wall opposite the doorway, looking for the bullet. It eventually transpired that there was no bullet- the shell case had been hurled against the window, or possibly fired by a catapult. The property manager (who was a Scot but married to a Norwegian) told me that they had been having a bit of trouble from some scratters that lived in some sort of flophouse nearby and that it was probably just some childish retaliation.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that remaining at my desk to ring the emergency number probably wasn’t the best course of action, perhaps I should have locked the door or even taken cover elsewhere!

That has been my only confrontation with firearms in the first fifty years, apart from clay pigeon shooting, which doesn’t really count.