I was weaned on the teat of England’s brutal history, dragged kicking and screaming on the coattails of Cromwell and his thuggish ilk. Hammersmith tube station or Battersea Park, let alone Brighton pier, are places you get used to being vulnerable in or on, with your eight sets of eyes. All of those places are a long way from Hurtle Square on a cold night in early July though. Distant memories of unprovoked violence simply to warm up or erase the boredom of English life float unwillingly to the surface. When you’re almost home after a night of poetry, a few drinks with fellow artists and your partner by your side, you could be excused for forgetting from whence you came and how you were reared. You might even forget, I suppose, that you were brought up as a boy and as such on a council estate your first rule was always that you fought – no matter what or why, reasoning was for continentals. The instinct is buried within you, as much a part of you as appreciation of rising damp and late night Indian takeaways. Still a long way from The Forest of Dreams though . . . Isn’t that what it’s called? I forget - my head is kind of fuzzy, a little time-warped; I’m still on rewind . . . back to my own dim future. Where was I? Oh yes, Hurtle Square early July year of our Lord two thousand and eleven. I’m walking, and for whatever reason I’m carrying a megaphone – God provides, my Aunt Kathleen always espoused between black and tans. Maybe I was planning a trunk call . . . maybe he just saw what was around my corner, or as it turned out, in the shadows of my immediacy. Next thing I’m aware of, I’m prostrate, looking at God’s very own celestial penthouse. I hear my partner shouting, my top gets ripped, God is getting very hands on these days – definitely over-stepping his creative brief.
Instinct kicks in - instinct is the first wave of adrenalin, the blitzkrieg as it were. Getting up from my earthly resting place isn’t as easy as instinct thinks however because instinct hasn’t allowed for the fact I’m wearing five-inch platforms, but instant recall has because instant recall remembers nineteen seventy-five. Why is there someone manhandling my partner in Hurtle Square? No time for logistics . . . I’m hit, in the back, the shockwaves send my kidney’s into rehab. Am I missing something here? I can hear tearing again . . . more shouting, my still-reeling brain at least realises I’m still clutching the megaphone. And I use it – my weapon at hand, but not to call God on . . . this is what you call instant messaging. Maybe our two assaulters hadn’t banked on the fact one of their victims would be in possession of a lethal instrument of destruction, or that the other doesn’t take assault lying down. Suddenly I’m back in the playground fighting . . . the old muscle memory jerks back to life with an oestrogen-fuelled reluctance; atrophy offers no inducement for reluctant combatants in Adelaide’s urban jungle fight nights. Dazed and confused I’m thinking that my aunt Kathleen is back from the tomb striking out right alongside me like she was still at my uncle Paddy’s wake, because all I can see right now is a red-headed thresher. When I fall over again I’m given a boot print signature on my arm, just for my troubles like, God bless you child.
There’s no time to run the numbers on hate crimes, attempted rapes or muggings, because the motive for this appears to be supercilious to all of those neatly-compiled statistics, it really does seem like a simple need for speed. All of which begs the question why would two red-blooded primates think it cool to attack two women . . . if they just wanted to fight? Has the Australian male slid that far from his back porch sofa? Strange times in the murder capital of the world, no sense to be made of random number sequences. The sum is irreducible - no need to call Sherlock Holmes or Graeme Greene, the time is right for fighting in the streets, the gender divide has been conquered. Multi-coloured bruising, Nurofen, Voltaren and support bandages later, we go looking for the batteries from the megaphone. Who knows why, post-traumatic shock is a strange beast, but somehow, befuddled as we were, we simply needed to feel the touch of alkaline again. Something to re-connect us to planet earth and God’s answering machine . . . maybe even my aunt Kathleen. The adage is wrong by the way, pain offers very little in the way of gain.
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