eye of the storm
It was good friday 2011, I was out having a drink with some friends in South Shields. It was an all day affair, I'd been drinking for aroubd 5 hours, but drinking slowly, which tends to make me a jolly drunk with an easy confidence. It was in this state that I found myself in the crab shack, normaly a fairly decent bar on the sea front. Being a bank holiday, it was busy, far busier than normal.

We'd been there a good half hour and I needed another drink, which in turn meant braving the crowd. Maybe I was just oblivious to the mood but at what seemed the drop of a hat violence erupted all around me, wild west saloon shit, 5 or 6 seperate fights all around me. I watched the scene unfold with indifference, it was the the scene in dead man's chest when Captain Jack Sparrow saunters through the pub brawl, without the hats.A pint glass was thrown, I watched it's flight path as it sailed over my shoulder and hit the guy directly behind me full in the face. Bouncers were swooping all around me to try and return the peace. I arived at the bar, smile at the clearly shaken barmaid and order a bottle of corona.

It was only the next morning that I realised how close I came too getting glaased in the face, caught in a brawl (where I would not have done well) or faced the rough justice of the bouncers. Hell, I could have been taken to be the ring leader as I was in the dead centre of the whole thing. Dumb luck kept me safe, but when I think how easily I could have ended up in trouble, it frightens me how much booze lowers my awareness and that there are some truly scummy people about, that pint glass could have blinded some one.
(Mong goose, Tue 10 Apr 2012, 1:20, Reply)