Monthly Archives: May 2011

INCIDENT 657: COMMON ASSAULT

May 30, 2011 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , 51 Comments

On Saturday afternoon, I went in to central London as I am perfectly entitled to do.

I went to the London Graphic Centre and bought a desk tidy in the shape of a large pencil sharpener:

After that, I went to the Cross Keys pub on Endell Street, where I was very impressed by the selection of switches behind the bar:

From there, I walked to Waterloo station to get the train home. I walked up the steps to the station and entered through the “Victory Arch” entrance (entrance 5 on this map). As I entered the station, a group of men started chanting “YOU FAGGOT! YOU FAGGOT!” at me. I stopped. I walked over to them.

“Sorry, what?” I said.
“What’s your problem?” replied the leader of the group.
“I just want to know what it was you were shouting at me. It was ‘You faggot’, wasn’t it? Why did you shout that at me?”
“It wasn’t ‘You faggot’, it was ‘You maggot’” lied a girl who was with the group.
“No, it wasn’t ‘You maggot’, it was ‘You faggot’. You chanted ‘You faggot’ at me”
“Listen mate, fuck off” said the group leader, ignoring the girl’s disingenuous and flawed attempt to resolve the tension, although quite why she thought I’d consider it acceptable for a group of people to chant “You maggot” at me is a mystery.
“No, I won’t fuck off. You called me a ‘faggot’. Why do you think that’s OK to shout at someone?”

By this point, the group leader was becoming visibly angry. He pushed me. He told me to fuck off. I refused to fuck off. He pushed me again. I asked him to stop pushing me. He was standing so close to me that I could smell his breath. His breath stank. I’m not sure quite how to describe the stink. It would be glib to describe it simply as the stench of hatred and ignorance. It was more than that. There was a horrible warmth to it as well. Not an emotional warmth, a physical warmth. I could feel the heat of his breath on my skin, and each time he spoke, I could feel tiny dots of spit landing on my face. And then there was this awful smell. I kept moving back but he’d move even closer. I briefly considered explaining to him that he had really foul breath, but decided against it. In retrospect, I think this was probably the right decision.

“Look mate,” one of his friends came over and tried to reason with me, “you’ve got two options. Either you fuck off or he drags you outside and kicks the shit out of you”.
“No, there’s another option. You could apologise for what you said.”

This suggestion was rejected as the group leader repeated the original two options a second time.

“What about my option?” I asked.
“Fuck off” came the reply. He shoved me to the ground1. I landed on my elbow. It hurt.

I was on the floor. I was in shock. I stood up. A man came over to us. He showed some sort of ID to the man with the bad breath. He said he was a policeman. The man with the bad breath and his friends walked off. The man with the ID started to walk away. “Hold on,” I said, “so you’re a policeman?”
“Leave it” he replied.
“No, if you’re a policeman, shouldn’t you have done something sooner, before I got shoved to the ground?”
“I just saved you from getting a kicking.”
“Well, can you give me your name or something?”

He ignored me and walked off. I followed him. I never saw his ID. Maybe he wasn’t a policeman at all, he just had some sort of identification which looked police-ish. Maybe he was a traffic warden or something like that. But then that would be a bit of a weird thing to do. They could easily have realised he wasn’t a policeman and beat him up as well. So was he a policeman? And if so, surely he should have been more helpful? He disappeared down the escalator. Should I have been grateful for his intervention or resentful for his unwillingness to explain who he was?

I went to the information desk. I said I wanted to report a crime and asked where I needed to go. “You go out through Exit 2, down the escalator, turn right and then follow the signs”. This is important to remember. If you are attacked on the concourse of Waterloo station and want to report a crime, simply go out through Exit 2, go down the escalator, turn right and then follow the signs. I went out through Exit 2, went down the escalator, turned right and followed the signs. I found a door with a buzzer. It wasn’t really very clear which button I was supposed to press. Fortunately, there was a policeman standing outside. “Hi,” I said, “I want to report a crime, do you know which button I’m meant to press or who I’m supposed to talk to?”
“That would be me,” he replied and opened the door.

Now, if you are ever assaulted in or around Waterloo station, and you go out through Exit 2, down the escalator, turn right and follow the signs to the British Transport Police offices, I cannot recommend PC Rakesh Phian highly enough. He was lovely. Calm and understanding, he listened patiently to what I had to say. He was really nice. I think he even offered me a cup of tea. As I explained what happened, all the emotions I’d managed to keep contained up until that point came out. The anger, the fear, the frustration. I felt like an idiot for letting all this happen. Then I felt angry at myself for thinking that. I was the fucking victim here.

In a way, I knew it was futile reporting this incident to the police. You could even argue that given the fact I wasn’t actually hurt, reporting it is a waste of police resources. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s important. It’s crucial. It is fucking unacceptable for anyone to shout abuse at anyone in this way. I could have ignored the abuse, I could have ignored the fact I was physically assaulted. But to do so is to is to ignore prejudice in its most explicit form. We have a duty to react to this sort of stuff whenever we see it. An obligation. We need to make it clear that we are not going to fucking take this any more. We are going to answer back. Because if we don’t, we’re saying this is OK. That this is how life is.

I think that’s wrong. I won’t accept that.

——
NOTES
1 I can’t really remember what happened at this point when he pushed me. I thought he sort of just shoved me to the floor, but the next morning, I realised that one of the buttons had come off my shirt, so I guess he must have sort of grabbed me and then pushed me over.

THOR

May 18, 2011 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

This is a poster for the film Thor:

Thor is directed by the actor Kenneth Branagh. I know this because a couple of weeks ago at work, someone said “Guess who directed the film Thor” and I said I didn’t know and he said “Guess!” and I said “Well, can you give me a clue?” and he said “OK, it’s an actor” and I said “Is it an American actor?” and he said “You don’t really understand the concept of ‘guessing’ do you?” and I said “I just want to narrow down the parameters before I start guessing, it’ll take a bit longer to begin with, but ultimately it should save time” and he said “OK, it’s a British actor” and I said “Dean Gaffney?” and he said “No, he’s more famous than Dean Gaffney” and I said “Adam Woodyatt?” and he said “No, he’s more famous than Adam Woodyatt” and I said “Ross Kemp?” and he said “Name someone who wasn’t in Eastenders” and I said “Kenneth Branagh” and he said “Yes”.

That isn’t exactly how the conversation went if I’m honest, although it definitely started with him asking me to guess who directed Thor. And I didn’t actually guess correctly at all, and gave up after about ten seconds and so he told me the answer. However, later that same day, I went to the monthly quiz at the Big Green Bookshop and during the film round, one of the questions was to name the director of Thor, and I was able to answer that one correctly, scoring one point which ultimately made no difference to our final position. I think we came fourth, out of about seven teams. I bet you’re impressed, aren’t you? Unless you were in one of the three teams which did better than us, in which case you can fuck off, you smug bastards.

Anyway, as is customary with these kinds of posters, it features a selection of quotes to illustrate how brilliant the film is.

Mark Adams of the Sunday Mirror gave it four stars and called it “an epic action packed fantasy adventure”:

Chris Hewitt of Empire also gave it four stars, saying that it is “tremendous fun… heady stuff”:

Matt Risley from Sky Movies.com gave it four stars as well, saying that the film was “impressive” and “undeniably fun”:

David Edwards of the Daily Mirror also gave it four stars, and said it was “brilliant” and called it “an action spectacular”:

Four stars again from Yahoo! Movies, who injected a bit of humour into their recommendation, describing the film as “thor-oughly entertaining” and adding that it is “a great summer movie”:

Finally, Robbie Collin from the News Of The World gave the film four stars, describing it as “a little belter”. Like Yahoo! Movies, Robbie also attempted a pun:

I thorly enjoyed it

Now, both Yahoo! Movies and Robbie Collin from the News Of The World have had similar ideas. Both of them have correctly identified the name of the film – Thor. They have both attempted to then squeeze that into the word “thoroughly”. Yahoo! Movies have realised that the word “thoroughly” already includes the word “thor” and, through the deft application of a hyphen, they have been able to draw attention to this fact.

Robbie Collin from the News Of The World has taken a different approach. He’s kept the “thor” bit, obviously – that’s the whole point after all – however, instead of inserting a hyphen between the “thor” and the “oughly”, he’s chosen to remove everything between the “r” and the “l”. He’s removed four letters from the middle of the word (“o”, “u”, “g” and “h”).

Two different ways of essentially solving the same problem. But which is the most successful? I personally would argue that the Yahoo! Movies approach is best, because “thor-oughly” is quite close to “thoroughly”. In fact, it’s the same word, but just with a hyphen inserted after the fourth letter. However, “thorly” hardly resembles “thoroughly” at all. It doesn’t look the same – it’s only six letters instead of ten. It’s a syllable short. It’s just a mess. “Thorly” could work as a substitute for the word “surely”, but it doesn’t work as a substitute for the word “thoroughly” and on this basis, I shall not be going to see this film.

ROYAL WEDDING

May 3, 2011 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , , , 9 Comments

I live in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (often abbreviated to United Kingdom). The United Kingdom (often abbreviated to UK) is a constitutional monarchy, with the monarch acting as a head of state within a constitutional framework. In this country, the monarch is a largely symbolic or ceremonial figure, with the real nuts and bolts work of governing the country instead being the responsibiliy of elected officials.

You may then question whether or not there is any real need for this ceremonial monarch figure. Indeed, you might even say, if we hope to have any pretence to being a genuine democracy, how can we bear to live for one more fucking second under this ridiculous system where people are rewarded with unimaginable luxury just as a result of the fact they were lucky enough to have been born to some other over-privileged, under-acheiving prick? Both reasonable questions, but let’s ignore all that for now. As you may have seen in the news, Prince William has just got married to Kate Middleton. This is hugely exciting, because Prince William is the son of Prince Charles and Prince Charles is the son of the Queen and the Queen is the Queen and she was chosen by God so it’s a really big deal, and definitely deserves global news coverage.

Because it is definitely true that Prince William getting married to Kate Middleton is one of the most incredible things to ever happen, David Cameron – our current Prime Minister, who has won precisely the same number of general elections as I have – decided that Friday would be a Bank Holiday, to allow people to prepare for the wedding on Saturday. Lots of people up and down the country were planning street parties, and many others planned to travel down to London to get a glimpse of the wedding procession, so there was a lot to do and it was very generous of Mr Cameron to allow us all to join in with this celebration of undeserved privilage.

I used this opportunity to go to Birmingham for the day. On Friday morning, I got the same train I normally get to go to work, but this time I got off at Vauxhall (from there I got a Victoria Line tube to Euston, and then a Virgin Trains service to Birmingham New Street). As I sat on the train to Vauxhall, I noticed that the train wasn’t as busy as usual:

On Saturday morning, I got up bright and early to go into Central London. As you may have detected from the above, I am not a natural royalist, but this was a historic event and I wanted to be there.

I’d heard rumours that up to a million people were expected to go into central London, but when I got to Westminster Abbey, it wasn’t quite as busy as I was expecting:

I went along to The Mall. I could see that the police were anticipating large crowds and had put out metal railings to control them, but it seemed like they’d anticipated a lot more people than actually turned up:

I got to Buckingham Palace. The world’s media were out in force. This pretty newsreader was from America:

Doesn’t she have a nice smile? I noticed that she seemed to be using her foot to stop her notepad blowing away:

I wondered what it said on the piece of paper, and luckily was able to get close enough to have a look:

There was an enormous crowd gathered outside Buckingham Palace:

Everyone was eager to see the royal couple’s first kiss on the balcony. I waited there for about four or five hours, but they didn’t seem to come out. Fair enough, I suppose – after all, this day was about them, not me. I decided to allow them to enjoy their special day in peace and went home.

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