Get a Mouthful of This!

There is no warning, clue, or anything one can do about some incidents. Occassionally they just come out of nowhere. Just like the incident in the previous post, a recent event could not have been predicted or forestalled.

Busy night, crowded dance floor. An early-20's female is suddenly punched hard, fast, and with impact, full in the face, by the male she is dancing with.

The girl is caucasian, the male one of those black african refugee types that have been turning up in this country over the past few years.

The girl is sent flying. A proper punch full in the face, with all his weight behind it, is going leave her at the very least with a swollen face & quite a shiner for a week or so.

The crowd erupts in righteous anger. The male makes a bolt for it. The crowd follows. A half-dozen or so caucasian males really mean business, and they are at the head of a much larger pack.

The male of african origin reaches his car, opens a door & withdraws a handy wheel spanner (as you do). Not a cross-brace, but one with a socket at one end & a 30-degree elbow in it.

Cossetted middle class readers, unaccustomed to unrestrained violence, are advised to stop reading here.

With all the force he can muster the african male swings the wheel spanner as hard as he can at the nearest attacker. He has a lot to lose & isn't holding back, conceivably his life is at stake. For effectiveness it isn't much different to swinging a golf club. The sound of the impact is dreadful, the white fellow's cheek is split to the bone, his nose is puree, blood is everywhere, the cheekbone is almost certainly broken. The white fellow wouldn't know much after that, his head would be ringing & numb, time will have stopped. (Unrestrained violence is very confronting). The african puts just as much force into the backswing, collecting the white fellow full on the opposite side of the face, but lower. The jaw/mouth/cheek are almost certainly cracked, several teeth will be smashed to splinters, the skin this time shredded on the chips of tooth. There is already too much blood for a proper visual evaluation of the damage.

The crowd are hurling objects, at this point the african's car is taking heavy damage, and is going to cost a lot to fix.

The police arrive, arrest the african. The ambulance arrives, loads the white feller. After they go the crowd reloads with rocks bricks etc, destroy the african's car. The only salvageable parts are now the chassis, motor & drivetrain.

As is so often the case in such incidents, the police have made a snap visual assessment upon arrival, and have probably arrested the wrong person. Though being arrested was probably the safest thing that could have happened to the african.

With the addition of one more factor, that just before being punched the female had kicked the male quite hard on the shin, there are enough clues in the above for anyone with even a passing knowledge human nature/behaviour to know that had the female on the dance floor had a brain and an instinct for self-preservation, none this would have happened.
Mine Host, were it up to him, would have charged her and let everybody else go home.

You won't be so Pretty

The rules as laid down by the Police: "It's your pub, what happens is your problem. Don't call us unless a weapon is used. All the rest of it you'll have to sort out yourself"

A familiar state of affairs.

The usual rough & tumble is easily handled. The pub is crowded with construction workers, mostly tradesmen or labourers. A boomtown pub packed with such types isn't much trouble, as it is peppered with able men just itching for something, anything, to start so they can get stuck in.

In such circumstances most are too wary to start anything.

In a crowded bar one night Mine Host is faced with an unsavoury dilemma.

Somehow he detects through the crowd & the music that something is amiss at the bar. Wending his way through the throng he sees Two of the male staff standing well back from a patron who is breasting the bar.

If ever there was a moment to be frozen in horror, this was it.

The patron, Johnno, with his left hand had one of the barmaids by the shirtfront, pulling her forward over the bar. In his right is a butcher's knife, honed down until the blade isn't much larger than his index finger. It is razor sharp & held to her cheek.

Johnno is a volatile, unstable & dangerous personality at the best of times, tonight he is mixing alcohol with his drugs. He is too far "gone" to talk to. He is a painter & extremely physically fit.

The barmaid is very pretty, with a lovely porcelain "china doll" face. Johnno is saying that if "anyone does anything" he'll slice her face to the bone several times.

A most unpleasant standoff ensues. In the circumstances none of the men mind copping a few slashes, our looks can take a couple of battle scars, but a very pretty girl is a different matter.

Eventually Johnno is talked to by the bar manager, who convinces Johnno that his (drug imagined) troubles weren't caused by the girl, and that "everybody understands" his situation, & nobody minds if he goes outside for a while to think it over.

He does just this, surprisingly he gives the honed down butcher's knife to the bar manager.

It has been the longest several minutes of everybody's life.

The police don't want to listen to the phone call, talking over the top & saying that "trouble in the pub is the pub's problem"

Mine Host strides accross to the Police Station. (At the time it was open at night) The Sgt behind the desk leans back in his chair, puts his arms out in front & talks loudly over the top of Mine Host. "You were told to not bring anything to us unless a weapon was involved, we don't want to know about your little scuffles" (etc etc etc)

When the message finally soaks in (water dripping through limestone would have been swifter) the Sgt becomes most businesslike.

"A razor-sharp concealed knife? Why didn't you say so?"

Within 10 minutes a police car has picked up Johnno from the streets of the town. On his person were Two more similar honed down to index finger sized razor sharp butcher's knives.

How'd you go with him Mate?

Closing time. The crowd is dispersing onto the street.
One fellow, Ron Moore, speaks loudly to another, Witt Complete, bluntly & coarsely putting it that he, Ron, has had intimate experiences with Witt's girlfriend.

Witt has some illegal drug in his system that is reacting badly to alcohol. This gives him a hair trigger & a firm belief in his own invincibility. It wouldn't have mattered what Ron said to him, "hello" would have been sufficient to trigger a violent reaction.

Witt has to be restrained by the guards. Ron is some distance away, talking to a friend & now that he goaded someone for sport, has no further interest in the matter.

A female approaches Witt, urging him to calm down & come home. She is the lady whose repute has been called into question and promises Witt a "good time" if he comes straight home without making any trouble. Hearing this exchange, Ron looks around, takes one look at her & announces that he has made a mistake, that it is someone else's girlfriend that he has been seeing on the sly.

Of course Witt is not soothed one bit by this, the drugs and a sense of outrage tell him to attack Ron. He starts with some verbal abuse. While the guards continue to restrain him this is his only weapon

The name calling & threats continue for a few minutes, eventually the guards release Witt. By this time Ron is sick of the insults, struts over to Witt, cleans him up in a brief flurry of blows, then decks him. It the starkest mismatch Mine Host has seen for quite some time.

Ron then casually departs the scene, disappearing around the corner with a friend. Witt demands to be allowed to go after him. The guards restrain him, but soon tire of saving him from himself.

Mine Host takes the view that Witt is of the age of majority, that the Wayside Tavern is not responsible for the drugs Witt has taken, and besides we are all sick of him by this point. So the guards leave him alone.

Witt beelines for the corner where Ron went.

Mine Host strolls to the other end of the block, in time to see Ron strolling along with his friend, neither with a care in the world.

A glance back along the street shows a crumpled form in the shadows on the footpath. Witt's friends are standing over him, trying to urge him back to consciousness so they don't have to carry him home.

So continues life behind the bar.

State of Distress

A Friday night. Another night of bopping & jiving at the Wayside Tavern. A young lady emerges from the crowd & informs staff that she has been molested (or somesuch).

To speed up the process of getting justice, she uses her mobile phone to call the police herself. Once connected she makes her complaint to the police. In response to a question from the officer on the line, she says:
"Oh, I'm still inside the Wayside Tavern, having a few drinks & so on"
..... ......
"I'm at the bar right now, but by the time you get here I'll probably be out on the dance floor, this music is too good to waste!"

One can guess how fast the police arrived. Come to think of it, they probably didn't arrive at all until their routine closing time visit.

So continues life behind the bar.

H2O

It takes only the smallest touch to transform the most mundane into something that will cause patrons to gasp, exclaim, and take photographs. This is a glass of water as we present it.