Excitement at the Road Block

There have been a couple of suicide bombers in Kabul this week, so the Police are tightening up with numerous road blocks in random places. In the evening, these road blocks consist of a number of policemen waving people down with a torch and then checking papers and moving on. They do not stop every car but a small selection, particularly cars with no number plates & those which are not full. There is a logic to this, a suicide bomber does not drive around in a car full of people, but alone. That is a point, what is the collective noun for a group of suicide bombers? Answers on a postcard, please.

Anyway, to reduce a long, rambling story to a short, rambling story, this evening we were stopped at a roadblock in our handsome, large armoured Toyota Land Cruiser. Obviously, once they had shone the torch in and seen the occupants and noticed we were an armoured vehicle, they waved us on. Again, logically, if you were a suicide bomber you would not use an armoured vehicle. Firstly, it would be a very expensive car to blow up and secondly, by definition, if it stops explosions getting in, presumably it would certainly diminish the effect of an explosion trying to get out. But this is not the point to my story.

As we were about to drive off the Police flagged down a Black Toyota Corolla, the car slowed, then accelerated through the road block and disappeared off down the road. The obvious response to this was for one of the policeman to get out his gun and start firing it into the air. This all simply leads to the fact that I have never seen a gun fired before in the open air like that and was just a tad surprised. My, what a sheltered life I have lead.

It is very cold tonight and the sky is thick with cloud. Heavy snow is forecast for tomorrow.