Concerning guns

It's not the safest border crossing but we'd done our research. Every thing's pointing to one bus company as the best means with which to cross and yet...

3.30am in the morning, immigration control, no man's land. Bleary eyed, it's pelting with rain, mud oozes through my shoes and I'm wet through. Trudging unthinking towards the lights and suddenly a scream. I turn, a struggle, a 6ft giant pressed against my wife and before I can think a gun is at her head - a moment frozen in time.

Screaming ´gun´and lunging forward, all sense of self-preservation is gone. Rugby tackling Kate back into the bus, through the door, legs everywhere and mud all over us, through the next door and slammed shut. Eyes wide and shoulder against the perspex, can plastic stop a bullet? Our eyes meet in terror, the unknown. We're safe? A beat... we're safe. To look at your loved-one's face in this state breaks every fibre of your soul.

It's all over in the blink of an eye and yet it plays in slow motion in the days to come. I see his jaw, distinct against the yellowed bus windows. I see his gun, a dull sheen raised above his shoulder a foot from Kate's head. The mud seems waist deep, my hoarse cries lost in the rain. Kate is but a shadow, a dark blob beneath a giant. The other passengers are gone, us against the world.

And the endless possibilities of what could have transpired. Wishes to have played the hero, done something different, dispensed some justice. The what ifs and the if onlys. And despite all these the overriding sense in the moment to get as far away from that thing as possible.

A threat on life, however remote it may have been, brings life into perspective, it also brings latent tears. A gun to the one you love, I wish this on no one.And now nothing else matters. Sod the Kindle, the iPhone, the camera, sod the trip? I have my wife, we have each other and that's all that matters.

Love you Kate.