Violence is everywhere. Sometimes if you’re pushed into it, you have to act and if you don’t act you can die.
Ok, this is in my own top 5. Hyson Green in Nottingham, approx 9am, absolutely freezing January morning stood in line waiting for a bus. Couple of elderly Jamaican ladies chin wagging, 2 council workers in fluro donkey jackets, few students. The wind was brutal, so much so it made my eyes water. Now, the area had lots of problems which you can all imagine the contexts of. But one of the worst was a schizophrenic called Barrington Jackson who would routinely terrorise students, try and follow them home and rob them. I was on my way to work.
I took a tissue out to dry my eyes and as I did this unit is walking past and screams in my face ‘look at you, crying like a fookin biatch’. You fuckin what mate? Caught off guard big time. Corner of this road is a crossroads with an Asian supermarket and he ducks in there. No bus. So you know if/when he reappeared it’s going to kick off. The 2 ladies were looking anxious but the council workers are laughing as in just another sunny day in NG7. And he reappears, he walks towards me, all death stares and puffed shoulders. Oh for fucks sake. Growing up in Glasgow and the north of England you’re socialised with violence, or more significantly the suggestion of it. So I had two options. Run or stand. This is where that cliche of time slowing down rings so truthfully because he started running at me but flaps a few nothings and the penny drops this bloke‘s heart isn’t really into it, so I cracked him in the jaw.
He sort of stumbled into the rush hour traffic, cars swerving, the ladies screaming ‘BARRINGTON, BARRINGTON, STOP THIS FOOLISHNESS’. Instead of backing off though, one of his hands went to his back trouser pocket, the gesture of a blade about to appear and then a stanly knife is out. He starts swishing it round, ‘I’m gonna fookin cut you good now bwo’ and I’m backing off, the ladies are out in the traffic too now and the students had run off, except for these 2 donkey jackets. He caught my hands with the blade a few times, but from behind him I see one of the workers drop his bag, put his finger up to his mouth in the ssssshhhhh gesture and in a millisecond bounded up behind him and smashed him in the back of the head. Barrington drops and I won’t lie we all kicked fuck out of him, put his knife on the curb, put him into the recover position and within a few minutes the polis arrived on a blue light call. He got 6 months for abh and even though they nicked me too all the witness accounts tallied and I got off with nothing except stitches to my hands.
I got one about getting monsooned while tripping on purple ohms but save that for a rainy day. Krav Maga classes for a few years are better than any other form of self defence or Jew jitsu as my Jewish spouse moans. Post Covid, look into it gang.