3000 quid santa hat
About 3 or so years back I was out in Cambridge with a group from the work Christmas 'do'. While moving from one bar/club that has just closed to another I was briefly separated from the others. It was while I was walking along by myself, resplendent in a fine santa hat (only a few booze stains), that one of a group of three young chavs heading the opposite way grabbed my lovely hat from my head. In my somewhat drunken state I didn't do the sensible thing and just let them have it, I tried to grab it back off his head (and missed). His response was to swing a fist at the side of my head (he didn't miss). Next thing I remember is coming round and looking up at the ambulancemen and policemen standing round me. I had a broken right arm so not a nice way to start off the Christmas holiday for me, but the hat they pinched turned out to be very pricey for the chavs. The fuckwits had beaten me up right in front of a CCTV camera, two of the three were arrested that night while I was still being X-rayed and the third was picked up the following day. In the end in addition to community service type things two of them had to pay me 1500 quid in compensation each. So between them they were 3000 quid out of pocket with only a second hand santa hat to show for it...

Seems I still haven't learnt my lesson about cooperating with muggers though. Last December in my new home of Sydney I was walking back from the pub through a pretty deserted part of town when I get jumped by two hoodie wearing bastards. So when I'm lying on the ground with an angry looking bloke sitting on my chest, waving a fucking huge kitchen knife in my face and demanding my wallet, what do I do? Of course, like the muppet I am I say 'no'. This seemed to annoy him for some reason, but while I don't clearly remember what happened next I must have done a decent job of fending off the knife (got the scars on my palms to prove it) as he only managed to cut my ear lobe open before they decided to leg it. Sadly there were no arrests this time, and to add insult to injury I later get a bill from the ambulance service (the 'comprehensive' public health service in Australia provides free emergency treatment but you've got to pay to get to it).
(Dr Hotdog is considering getting shot in t'eyes with lasers, Fri 16 Jun 2006, 8:07, Reply)