Is this your vehicle? Were you proceeding south at the traffic-lights at the entrance to Old Hall Street on Friday 21st August around 11:00 a.m. and were you showered with money?
I pull up at the lights on the inside lane and on the central reservation is a homeless man with a sign that reads something like 'I've no money so give me yours instead'.
Your honour, I stare fixedly ahead pretending to have spotted interesting clouds in the sky, but realising it would be me in a year or two, I reach for a new pound coin ~ the one with with a harder rim than previous ~ and toss it toward the man with a cry of 'Here's a quid mate'.
At this point the vehicle pictured in the CCTV drove up the outside lane and the coin bounced audibly and visibly off the bonnet, ricocheted off the windscreen and given the length provided by an estate, careened off the roof as a parting shot.
I wound the window up, appearing to have spotted an interesting cloud. The coin in question came to rest in the hatched area between the signals, given the impetus provided by the estate.
My feeling is the homeless man, my cries drowned out by traffic, had the impression I had been shouting abuse at him whilst throwing whatever came to hand.
On reflection I view the whole incident as something of a shit-show, but it did keep me amused for the rest of the day and therefore I consider it a pound well spent.
It would though form the basis of an ideal primer for the Oxbridge entrance exam if you would forward this extract during proceedings?
A trucker stopped at the lights spots a homeless man to whom he throws a pound coin. The coin chips a passing vehicle in multiple places and the vagrant feels he was subject to verbal abuse. Liverpool City Council disposes of the belongings of its homeless on a daily basis, in an effort to ethnically-cleanse its city-centre.
Who is to blame: the trucker, the vagrant, the council, the motorist or the trucker's parents? How would Seneca feel if his chariot were struck by a flying denari?
50 marks
