Last week we committed the shameful act of gloating at someone else’s misfortune, but I feel it was entirely justified, and the person suffering the misfortune brought it on himself.

This little family celebration happened last week. I was reading through our local paper and there was a story about someone in our street being sent to prison for 15 months as a result of punching his boss during an argument at work. I thought the name seemed familiar and checked with Jayne that it was the person I thought it was.

And it was. He actually moved out of our road months ago, but the papers must get addresses from court papers relating to the time of an offence or something. Anyway, this was the same man who shot our son last year with a BB gun.

The police were involved, obviously, and I think he ended up bound over for a couple of years. We are sure that this firearms offence was taken into consideration when he was sentenced, and really hope that it helped to add a couple of months on.

Apparently he had a whole heap of previous convictions, but ‘only a couple’ were for violent offences, the rest were for “dishonesty relating to vehicles”. What that actually means is that he was well-known for stealing mail from empty houses and using the details to get finance for new cars.

Our own involvement with him was when he shot at our boy, who was 12 at the time, but small for his age, because he felt ‘intimidated’ by him. This is a bloke who is now in prison for laying out his building site foreman with a single blow which broke his cheekbone and eye socket!

At the time I deliberately avoided meeting the man in case I did something I would regret. It was very difficult, but I’m glad I did. (Apart from anything else it sounds like I could have got severely hurt) I hear through the Broadfield grapevine that he is now in another part of the neighbourhood and is deeply unpopular with everyone in his new road. Maybe they had a street party last week?

The real shame of it is that I always thought his Mrs. was OK. I have some sympathy for her being stuck with him, and now being stuck on her own. I also feel a bit sorry for his new neighbours. We had petitioned the housing association to kick him out – the shooting was only the most recent example of him being obnoxious, but as it had a police incident number we reckoned it was good proof of him interfering with other tenants. We had rather hoped that he would end up a lot further away than the other end of Broadfield, even if we were not naive enough to expect him to use the opportunity to make a fresh start.

But I am now starting to understand some of the basis for the old saying about revenge being a dish best served cold, and if I sound like the Daily Mail personified in saying that prison is the best place for a thug like that I don’t care.