Brawl.
Wednesday 15 August 2007
Well.
Pre-team meeting (Thursday at 5pm, fact-fans), it really couldn't have gone any better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.
Your typical night, really. Very busy, the arcades in particular, with groups of kids doing crazy things like tilting the two-penny waterfall machines to make a hedonistic 24p (or more!). Lots of underage drinkers, etc. An early highlight was a heavily pregnant woman passing out due to the intense heat in the main bar (the air conditioning is still broken), falling back off her chair and hitting her head on a table. I had to do the first aid - fortunately, she was a trained nurse, and diagnosed herself to a clean bill of health.
So, it's around 1.30am and last orders has been called. Jones and I had been very closely watching a pair of very-heated brothers for an hour or so, but they seemed to have calmed down. I left the main bar to have a look in the arcades when suddenly over the radio came the now-familiar, but eternally unfathomable, "SDSD SDHKS DKS DKSHDKSH DSK DHSKH!" What this means, of course, is that there's a problem in the main bar. Duh.
I go inside and The Lodge is just marginally visible between at least eight other women of various ages on the dance floor, and around this group is probably 15-20 other people, all looking a tad animated. I walk over to see what is going on, and before I can even make out what The Lodge is saying it all goes a bit, well, berserk.
And, as per usual of late, it was nearly all women.
Fists flying everywhere, pushing, shoving, bad language, and one cracking punch from one women to another that connected full-on and very quickly resulted in a Rocky-style downpour of blood from the punchee's unfortunate face. Then it really hit the fan, with husbands, boyfriends, brothers, ad infinitum, all getting stuck in, and one chap thought he was helping the situation by picking up a 16-year old girl and throwing her into the stage. He misjudged his surroundings, however, as that only made things worse.
Finally, we managed to calm it all down. By then, The Lodge had taken a punch in the face. Bilbo, who was useless again to a point where I had to SHOUT AT HIM IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, had also taken one on the chin, but that kind of seemed fair enough given that instead of getting one of the key women out when he could have done he walked the other fucking way. Poor Jones had lost his earpiece and had the misfortune to have had one large woman stand on his foot and literally tear his shoe in two. Look:
That's what you call a trophy. I took one of the key families out the back firedoors and walked them all the way back to their villa (which was, naturally, miles away). We went from "I'm calling the police!" to "I only did what every other mother would have done!" (this came from the cracking punch thrower) to "Thanks for your help, ADJ!". Good times.
From start to finish the entire brawl took about an hour to clean up.
What this all means, of course, is that all of these people - and there was some twenty-five involved in total - who are here until the weekend at least, are most likely going to kick off again, and again, and again.
What this means for me is free drinks at the bar, as I actually got one tonight for the first time in fucking weeks.
posted by Sheamus @ 3:30 am
