So. There I was, slumped in a table seat on the early-morning southbound train from Glasgow Central when I suddenly became convinced that there was an iPhone-style charging gauge suspended in the air above my head. And not just me: there was one above every Scotsman. With each passing mile the gauges filled and we became tougher and more dangerous until just past Manchester a voice said “Level up! You are now official representatives of the Hard North.”
There are great advantages to being Glaswegian somewhere other than Glasgow. I once averted a mugging attempt at a lonely London cashpoint by the simple expedient of pulling my phone out of my pocket and being loudly regionally accented at it.
Here at home, of course, I enjoy no such advantage and as a result every fight seems to deteriorate into an opportunity for me to bust out some classic buffoonery. There was the punch that left me splayed across a car bonnet (age 10), the unexpected kick in the belly that made me let out a huge squeaky fart (age 13) and the altercation outside a chip shop which ended with most of a fish supper lodged in my ear cavity (“that guy really battered you,” my friends noted approvingly).
I only remember one time when I actually started a fight with a complete stranger. What happened was this: sixteen-year-old me was headed for the bus home one Saturday night after a few pints at the October Cafe in town. At the top of Union Street my friend David and I became aware that the man behind us was saying unpleasant and ill-mannered things to his (I assume) girlfriend and making her cry.
I turned to the guy and made some totally innocent remark to the effect that he was a dickhead and why didn’t he shut up, and suddenly he got a little confrontational. He was squaring up to me, my friend David was standing between us telling me the guy wasn’t worth it and the girlfriend was trying to calm her man down. Meantime the guy launched a series of ad hominem attacks on my haircut (centre-parting, shoulder length, probably a bit greasy), my shirt (I like to think I was paying personal tribute to Nelson Mandela with that night’s choice) and various other aspects of my physical appearance.
Now this guy, physically, was no great prize either. Besides having the expression of a mean drunk in ugly temper plastered across his face he was also jowly and corpulent, with the physique of a manual labourer running to flab as he reached middle age.
In other words, he was probably something around three times my physical size and strength.
Three things then happened in quick succession. First, I said the words “Who ate all the pies anyway you fucking fat bastard?”; second, he barged David and the girlfriend aside and lunged at me; third, I ran for it.
I’ve never been able to run very far but I set the pace of my life as I sprinted across the road and down the other side of the street. Once I’d gone half a block I looked back to see this massive form pounding towards me in the grip of a killing rage. As I looked he launched himself at my legs in a diving tackle, came up short by a few centimetres and crashed into the pavement. He got back up and immediately resumed the pursuit but the dive lost him enough time that I was able to get across the Argyle Street junction and into the McDonalds on the other side.
It was after eleven p.m. on a Saturday night, so McDonalds was crammed full of people who had been at the under-18s night at the Sub Club next door. I got in line at one of the counters, hoping that somehow the guy hadn’t seen me come in or that he would suddenly lose interest or forget my existence entirely. I was so busy willing these unlikely events into existence that I forgot where I was until I reached the front of the queue and the staff member asked for my order.
Reflexively I turned and looked back at the entrance. The guy was staring in from outside, his vision obstructed by both the greasy handprints on the door glass and a generous helping of the red mist. Our eyes met. Before I had time to react he had burst in, grabbed my head, smashed it against the counter—
—and then ten plainclothes policemen congealed out of the Sub Club Unders crowd, pulled him off me and frogmarched him outside to a waiting van.
One officer took me aside. “He’ll spend a night in the cells,” he said. “You won’t have to give a statement or anything. But do you know why he attacked you?”
I shrugged. “Totally unprovoked,” I said.
