Sunday, fucking Sunday.
Monday 28 May 2007
The final night of the footballers', and up until about 10pm all was well.
You'll remember last time I told you about the series of presentations/awards ceremonies that go on on the Sunday, and how busy that shit gets, specifically because, unlike the Saturday, each team hands out special presentation tickets to pretty much anybody they like. The place was heaving, and because of the bad weather (it rained solidly for about five hours), nobody really wanted to leave the complex. It's busy to the point where your presence is almost redundant; the place is impossible to police and there are so many people swarming around that you are almost compelled to not see the wood for the trees.
But... it seemed to all be in order. Kids doing their typical Lord of the Flies stint, their parents/uncles/aunties/someone they casually knew once getting smashed, etc etc. No worries. Jabba had even gone down the lower bar to help The Lodge out. Then, out of nowhere, a bloke chases two kids out of the complex. "You... get back in your fucking bed NOW!" he says to one, then, "And YOU... get in your FUCKING BED NOW!" to the other.
Hmmm, I think. What have we here. I follow them outside just to see what's going on, but they're turned the corner before I'm there. Somebody comes up to me and says, "Don't worry; they're his kids." OK, not the way I'd have handled it, in a public place and all, but fair enough. I go back inside.
Ten minutes later, my attention is drawn to a large crowd outside the complex collectively walking towards something. I look out, and the same bloke is back again, but this time he's going full on with another geezer. I run down there and force myself in between them, giving it the usual "Come on lads, break it up" shite, but then it gets a bit odd. One of the blokes is being quite aggressive; his opponent is adopting more of a restraining stance. The restrainer says to me, "Just leave us mate, it's alright." Which is all well and good, but when his mate says to the other guy:
"Don't do this; I'll fucking hurt you."
Well, I can't really just piss off, can I? I split them up and the aggressor just runs off, literally. I note then that a woman is watching, who identifies herself as the nutter's wife. Both of them then turn on me. "What did you go and do that for? We were trying to stop him," they say.
What transpires is as follows. Earlier, we'd had a report over the radio of some of the football kids banging on caravan doors, pulling out the electrics, etc. This isn't unusual when it's busy, but it was to the extent where it was a problem, and it was dealt with. The kids that the psycho bloke had chased out of the complex were his own, and were involved. However, other kids were involved too, and something appeared to have gone down between these different kids and psycho's because his agenda then became all about tracking down and, one assumes, physically punishing them, to the extent where his wife, and the guy who I now discovered was his best mate, felt compelled to stop him.
Nutter had already been ejected from the lower bar before he came up to see us. I'd already called it through to all security before he did a runner, and in the piss-pouring rain we all followed him outside the complex and down into the park. He was gone, but for a moment his best mate then became the issue. They were all a bit drunk, naturally, and he went from the usual accusations of 'all bouncers are cunts...' to us explaining why we acted how we did because of what we saw, and then him realising how it all looked. He was fine, we were fine, the bloke was gone, so we all went back inside. Not before, however, he'd revealed that the lunatic was one of the team's manager.
Then another call came over the radio from the new DS, who we'll call Worthy. I couldn't make out the message at all but it didn't take me long to realise that the lunatic had somehow doubled-back behind us and got back into the complex. Several blokes were now holding him back. Amusingly, as I walked up, the biggest of the football security blokes went up to him - he's at least 6ft4 and 20 stone - but was met with a resounding "FUCK OFF!", and duly did. Yeah, cheers mate.
Worthy tells me what happened. At the last minute, he clocked the guy going back inside but before he could act psycho had gone up to another manager and headbutted him. What is it about this fucking place and headbutts? Worthy managed to get him in an armlock and outside, and by now the throng had seen him well away from the doors but he was still acting like a proper mental. His mate had explained to us how us being there, but keeping distance, while his friends calmed him down would be the best medicine, and it was working. Then, naturally, another one of the football security boys walks straight up to him, says this and that, and it all kicks off again. Eventually, he leaves, has another go at the lower bar, is kicked out of there again, and then last I heard was being taken off the complex.
By now, the park had a real sinister vibe going on, was still packed to the gills with pissheads, and I'll admit I feared the worst. We're talking a couple of thousand drinkers here, and three doormen. You do the math(s).
Somehow, however, we got through it. A woman passed out in the main bar and had to be taken away by ambulance, and clearing a walkway for the stretcher wasn't a piece of cake, let me tell you (pissheads don't like it when they have to leave their comfy tables), and we had all kinds of petty crap with kids and teenagers doing their usual shit, and half an hour after closing time we discovered eight people were only halfway through their game of tenpin bowling (and the odds of the duty manager switching the machines off and refunding their money was somewhere between 'none' and 'fuck all'), but somehow we got them all out.
And Goddammit I'm fucking knackered.
posted by Sheamus @ 3:30 am
