After the Sopranos, a Mugging.

The thing about nightshifts is they reduce your willpower to actually go to bed on time. Once again I've becomne transfixed by the Sopranos, and it was after midnight last night, which is late when you're 42, when I heard a banging outside.

It was like someone thumping on something. And I was just cleaning my teeth in a state of horrific undress when there came a ringing on my front door bell.

Now the thing is, late at night, anywhere - never mind in Brixton - what do you do in this situation? I have a feeling that quite alot of my neighbours opted for the 'staying safely snug in bed' option. But I grabbed a towel and peeped through the peephole to see a youngish bloke in blue shirt and charcoal grey trousers.

"I've been mugged" he said "at the end of this road"

I told him to stay where he was and Ms T came down with my robe.

He came in and we made him a cup of tea. The story he told us was all too typical; coming home after a couple of drinks he'd been attacked by three men, who held a knife to his neck, and get this, a gun to his head - they'd extracted his wallet, his keys, his address AND his pin numbers.

"But what would you do?" he asked, and plainly there is no choice if you're in this situation.

The police turned up in about a minute - I really haven't ever seen them respond quite so quickly and the shaken bloke was led away. I asked them if they wanted to call a locksmith but the young policeman (they are all young these days, with hardly any hair) said they'd take care of all that.

Unsuprisingly Ms T and I lay awake for a while after this listening to the police vans moving up and down the street. What do you do and say about bullshit like this? That muggings have been happening since the seventeen hundreds? That there but for the grace of God? That this could have been another Tom Ap Rhys Pryce?