Eighty-year-old retired tailor, James McKay, spent Saturday night in jail after hitting thirty-year-old Keith Smith over the head with his walking stick. McKay's wife, Laurene told us that while McKay is usually a peaceful person, he had been driven to this act of violence by getting wet just once too often.
Smith lives above the McKays and it appears that not only is he a keen gardener, he is also a fish collector. Unfortunately for him, the water he sent over his balcony every day ended up on the McKay's, or too often, on the McKays themselves.
“For the last fortnight, since Smith moved into the flat above us, we have hardly dared go onto our balcony,” said Laurene. She added that it wasn't so much the water falling onto their balcony from Smith watering his plants that bothered them, it was more the way he cleaned his fish tanks. “We'd be sitting there happily reading our newspapers, when suddenly so much water would come from above that we'd be as wet as if we'd showered with our clothes on! Neither could we get rid of the smell of fish!”
And on Saturday evening it was just too much. “It was James' birthday,” explained Laurene, “and I'd made him a birthday cake. The candles were a great sight as you can imagine, but James didn't get to blow them out.”
Instead, Smith emptied one of his larger tanks over his balcony and both the McKays and the cake were wet through. Rarely had Laurene seen McKay move so fast. “I couldn't stop him. He was up there in a flash. It was the fastest I'd seen him move since 1964.”
Smith is not going to take things further with the police. He has also promised to change his ways from now on. And what of James McKay? As he left the police station a large crowd of supporters sang him, “Happy Birthday”. “Definitely the most exciting birthday ever!” said the cheerful old man. “The best since my adolescence I'd say!”