Professional thugs

It’s just unbelievable. One second you’re leaving a pub after celebrating your team winning a match against their arch-rivals. Some ‘rioded up, knuckle-dragging rock-ape of a bouncer takes exception to something you say (Hookes became a well-known and widely respected sports journalists after his retirement and was notoriously opinionated, so it’s reasonable to assume that’s what occurred, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something far more innocuous). He runs up behind you and punches you in the back of the head. Crack. Your skull strikes the ground and you’re clinically dead. 18 hours later your life-support machine is unplugged. And such incidents of assault are probably quite frequent given the fairly well-conceded fact that many bouncers seem to live in a provocative world of their own, where physical domination is more a matter of pride and ego than a last-resort method of earning your pay. I’ve mentioned in a recent entry that I don’t go out to bars and clubs very often, but even I’ve had the odd altercation with the puffed-up meatheads. I’m not physically diminutive by any means, but nor am I in the slightest bit interested in participating in their canine-esque, clenched-jaw territorial posings (I’m sure they’d piss on the doorways of the clubs they’re paid to control if they could get away with it). One got noticeably annoyed when his attempts to plant his hand in the centre of my chest and shove me backwards made little leeway (like I said, I’m not weak), while another screamed at me as if I’d just knifed his mother when I dared to misunderstand his barking monosyllabic neanderthal mating call. Philistines. My antipathy towards capital punishment is sorely tested when I hear about senseless, cowardly, murderous behavior like this. And the world is robbed of yet another genuine nice guy who, unlike his attacker, decided to make a success of his life.