Barbarism Begins At Home

Guildford can get pretty rowdy on a Saturday night, but I wasn't prepared for what happened at the weekend. After a few rounds of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and washing down some chocolate orange cookies with half a litre of fiery ginger beer, my friends and I headed into Guildford. Being the non-drinker, I drove with a car load of friends and parked up in the highstreet. This was about 10:30pm, so the night was still young and most of the lout population were busy downing sambuca shots to reduce the already low number of brain cells floating in their thick heads. Or so I thought.

We were walking down a shopping street on the way to Wetherspoons, I gazed lovingly at the Apple retailer as I stroked the bulging pocket of my drainpipe jeans, the home to my new iPhone 3GS. I usually have my wits about me, but that evening I was just a little too relaxed and was paying more attention to my purple shoes than anything else around me. I knew two people were approaching our direction, but I didn't think anything of it. I should have though, for a second later one of the men had lunged towards me and hit me square and hard in the chest with his shoulder. I fell to the floor like a sack of limbs, I didn't even see the face of my attacker as he and his companion walked a few paces before stopping to see what would happen next. This was a surreal moment, it was silent, I picked myself up off the floor, slightly shocked I glanced to see who had attacked me. I still don't remember their faces, but I acknowledged that they were of the dodgy type so I made the decision to not take action. Instead I told my friends that it wasn't worth any more trouble and I started to walk away in a daze.

"Will, here are your glasses". I hadn't even noticed that my specs had flown off my face in true geek fashion and landed on the pavement. I carried on walking, as did my friends, we didn't hear from the two thugs so I was sure they had too walked away. It wasn't until Monday that I realised my glasses had actually been scratched, a trip to Specsavers confirmed the worst, it would cost £69 to replace the lenses. So not only had I been attacked, but my favourite glasses had been ruined by some brainless, meat-headed, alcohol fuelled barbarian who decided to relieve his pent-up idiot aggression on someone who hadn't even laid eyes upon his brutish, square face.

And what did he prove? Nothing. I'm still sure I made the right decision by walking away. People like that only do these things to get a rise out of people, their lives are so painfully dull that they turn to violence to liven up their evenings.

Like Miyagi-san used to say in the Karate Kid, "fighting is never good".