Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Random mindess violence

My weekend was going fantastic up until 9.00am on Sunday Morning. I had spent times with my best friends, frollicked on the river Thames on Friday, spent Saturday at new found friends places, went to another funny-ass party on Saturday night, and winded up at a friends studio on Brixton Hill. Pretty much par for the course.

It all started to go wrong, when we left my mate's studio. A few of the boys I was with we're keen to go up the road to a horrible pub called George the Fourth. For a bit of background, this pub attracts mainly white Eastern Europeans, Israeli and your typical white English yobs. Oh, the music is the shittest hard house music you have head ever. (Like any hard house is good?) I didn't want to go, and granted the place has a certain novelty value, but in general, has a seedy underbelly, that I really don't want to be exposed to.

We were walking up towards the pub, I was lagging back, basically not wanting to go in, and some guy caught my eye, swigging from a vodka bottle outside. He started to come towards me. He turned out to be Russian.

Russian: "What are you looking at?"
Me: "Err, Nothing"
Russian: "Stop spitting at me when you speak"
Me: "Err, what?"

At this point, my pals came over and some disjointed conversation started. I didn't catch most of this but it was going along the lines of "Go back to your own country" I can't remember who was saying what, because I had started to walk down the hill, away from it all. I then saw a couple of guys walk over to what must have been thier friends and join in in the conversation.

Next thing I saw was my mate Mikey getting smacked in the jaw, by one of the guys who had just joined the conversation. They we're just looking to start a fight. Mikey didn't retaliate, and in the space of maybe 10 seconds my other mate George was getting belted by the Russian guy and the English guy who had punched Mikey in the first place. The English guy was trying to smash a wine bottle over George's head. It didn't break, but George was bleeding and had copped a bit of a shiner. George bolted, and Scott, my other pal was closet to the gang now, walking down the hill after us. They started laying into him now. He kept on falling over and he got kicked in the ribs, and once in the head.

For some reason they stopped and dissappeared behind a van. We kept on walking down the hill. They had gone. Thank God. We we're all dumbfounded, confused and generally freaked out. George was looking quite bad, so we all scarped back to my house and got him cleaned up. He's going to be ok. Bit of a shiner and a sore arm. Mikey may have lost a tooth, and has a very sore jaw. Scott has bruised ribs I think. I escaped unharmed.

What freaks me out about this is, well speaking for myself, I tend to live in a bubble, with all my close friends. The outside world doesn't really come in that much. You hear about muggings, and random violence all the time, people getting stabbed and raped. The news is filled with it. And to some extent, that's all it is to me, just news. But when it comes right to your doorstep and bursts your bubble, well that's a different story.

I'm not a violent person, and I'm pretty sure none of my friends are, but as we found out on the weekend, there's a few members of society who are. I've been thinking a lot, since then what drives violent people to be the way they are? In the end I have given up counting the possible reasons. There are too many. Where do you begin? Shit job, Shit upbringing, Parents beat them up, Can't make it with the ladies, Drink too much, Dead end life, They actually like the buzz? The list goes on and on.

It pisses me off that I'm even giving these wankers on the weekend some of my time, by actually thinking about what their life must be like?

Why am I bothering? I don't really know. All that I do know, is that I don't want any thing like what happened on Sunday morning come into my life, or any of my friends lifes ever again.

Rainbows and lollypops will resume tomorrow.