The Fat Bloke Diaries

Episode Twenty-Six – Mean Streets

How can one little announcement cause so much fuss? Not since Harold MacMillan shouted through his toilet window, “I have in my hand a piece of paper”, has so much been said by so many about so few words.

“I’m doing a 10k run”.

I always receive some responses to every FBD, but that one line in last week’s edition opened the floodgates.

I’ve had messages of surprise, delight, concern and disbelief, but overall support and encouragement. Thanks to you all, that’s very much appreciated. I hope you’re all behind me just as much when I come asking for your cash; I’m doing the run as a fundraiser. Or as my aged mother put it, ‘Is it a bit like a sponsored walk then?’

I’m running to raise money for the British Heart Foundation. More details will be forthcoming later, but for the moment, please just prepare yourself to dig deep.

Times are hard for charities at this time, as they are for all of us. Even Chelsea have stopped snapping up footballers for the price of a hospital wing. Criminals and opportunist thieves too are becoming more desperate. Despite the face that I don’t look the most affluent Johnny from the block, even I’ve fallen victim to an attempted daylight mugging.

I should have seen the danger immediately. Lonely street, two young guys in baseball caps walked towards me, gave each other a nod and a wink, moved apart so that I could pass between them.

I’d just got beyond them, through the gap between their Burberry jackets, when they turned and pounced. One grabbed me from behind while the other pressed his face tight against mine and screamed for my wallet while fumbling inside my jacket pocket. They were terrifying. They were fuelled by testosterone and cheap lager. They were all of sixteen.

I’m not a little chap, never have been. I’m also not very good at doing the sensible thing in bad situations. My inner-Hulk tends to take over. Which is why I grabbed one chap and threw him into his mate. It was now my turn to bellow at my loudest with my nose half a nanometre away from one of theirs (they had one each).

“Leave this place right now or I’ll feed you his spleen”. Apart from the substitution of something rather earthier for ‘Leave this place’ (this is a family column after all), those were the exact words that I used, I can remember them clearly. I’m still impressed by my obscure and totally off the cuff choice of threat as I held one by the lapels and jabbed my finger into the other’s face. I’m not really sure where someone’s spleen is or what it does, and even less what it would taste like, but I recognise the power of quick thinking and decisive action. I’m certain that both contributed to saving the day and my wallet.

They fled, hurling abuse at me even as the retreated.

So the good guy prevailed, but what if they’d turned nasty. What if, if you don’t mind me slipping into Bouncer-speak for a moment, ‘it had all kicked off’? Should I have gone down the self defence route and piled in, or just gone down under a hail of body-blows? Probably the latter. Despite the initial bravado and bluff that got me out of this nasty situation, I couldn’t have sustained my anger. I’m stupid, but not that stupid. Or drunk.

My mate Stuart tells me how he’s started boxercise at his gym, how he loves it so much that he’d even installed a heavy bag in his garage.. I can easily imagine him punching and kicking seven shades of poo-poo out of his bag, but Stuart is one of the nicest people I know; I can’t imagine him doing it to another human. But as stress relief and aerobic workout he says it’s great.

Maybe I should take it up. I could become the ‘Barnsley Chuck Norris’ and practice roundhouse kicks to the spleen.


© 2009 Shaun Finnie
 

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