Traditional Solution

All is fine in the bar, things bubbling along nicely, a "middling" atmosphere. That is, a blue could break out, but unlikely to be anything more than one-on-one. Limited chances of an all-in, never mind of a riot.

Then one patron clouts another accross the head with a stubby. (a 375ml, or 13 fl oz, beer bottle)

Result: The clouted one has a nasty gash in his scalp. (Try doing this yourself, a stubby bottle is much harder to break on someone's head than the TV would have you believe.)

In this namby-pamby day and age that event is known in Queensland as a "glassing". A sick joke, perpetrated by our politicians & bureacrats, clearly they've never popped over to Glasgow and discovered for themselves what a "glassing" really is.

There is a lot of blood. Scalps bleed well, especially when the blood is thinned by alcohol.

Clouting this fellow accross the head may not have been the wisest move, as he is much bigger, and much more muscular.

However, the initiator, though a much smaller & more lithe fellow, is a manual labourer. Not a trade union softy from a building site, but a real worker, a deckhand for a fisherman. His muscles, though wiry & small, are hard as steel, and he looks as if he is no stranger to overcoming intense physical hardship.

He will be quite a lot harder to handle than a casual the white-collar uninitiate would imagine.

The big fellow, the victim, quickly forces the issue outside.

So they go at it in the middle of the street. It is a proper barney. It ends with the attacker vanquished, laying in the gutter, a bloodied & pulpy mess, unable to rise.

The victor strolls away. There is blood all over him, some of it his own, some of it not.

The ambulance arrives about here. They carry away the white fellow (the one who started it). The black fellow (the one who was "glassed") refuses ambulance attention & walks away. He'll certainly require a lot of stitches. It is not ever known what medical attention he seeks, if any. Indeed it is not known who he was.

Due to the mass of blood, and the black fellow refusing ambulance attention, nobody notices, remembers or declares that the fight started with a glassing.

It ends as it began, with people drinking in the bar. The white fellow is seen to have "asked for it", there is no sympathy. He'll certainly never look the same again.

This is a good outcome. Had the "G" word been used, Mine Host would have been the subject of an investigation, had a "strike" recorded against his licence, & against his managerial probity.

For in this age of nobody being responsible for their own actions, it is the publican who gets the blame if broken glass is used to hurt someone. It is very expensive for the publican if "glass" is used twice in one year.

You'd have always thought the blame belonged with the person who as an adult makes a conscious decision to break a glass & cut someone.