History, Politics & Religion

My father and mother always told me that the above were not things to be discussed in polite company, as often the historical-versioning, political positioning and religious fervouring of your nearest and dearest may not be exactly that with which you yourself agree. It's easy: avoid rows - don't mention these three things.

Unfortunately, all three horsemen of the Apocalypse rode into town this evening aboard fiery steeds, nostrils flared and pumping steam from their cavernous recesses, their gloss-black coats speckled with sweat, rippling with muscle. An old friend was back in the country for the first time in a while - certainly, the first time in a while with us lot all together - and sadly, we entered the Israeli-Arab Conflict as a prime topic for debate. Football had been done, as well as the relative merits of leaving England (given our special guest tonight).

You can't pick up a paper today without the Muslim issue being raised, and from there we hit the Iraq war, and from there, the Jewish-Palestinian furore. Around the table are some very well-informed chaps, and others less so. One of our number took such exception to my demolition of his position, that he chose to purchase a round without including my Amstel in the calculations. I get up to get my own pint, which I return with and slam on the table. The culprit gazes at me with a wry smile across his smug, dumb fizzog. We continue. Eventually, we reach a point so heated, that - damn it - I lay the rest of my pint across him. And others, either side. It's a spectacle, and the kind I can only generate when truly espousing righteous irritation at the childish behaviour of one of our number (sorry, who's childish?) It's tit for tat, as it always is with this least-intelligent member of our cohorts.

Anyway: I immediately admit my stupidity, my out-of-line-ness, and take to my feet to leave. I have accepted my foolishness before my peers, I have embarassed myself and my lady, and my friends. And as I make to leave, the object of my verbal assassination comes marching around the table, and smacks me in the side of my head with a pint glass.

Clarity rushed upon me like the heat when you open an aircraft door in the tropics. Whooosh. I didn't retaliate. I didn't punch, flail, kick or scream. I just stood there, eyeballing him, and repeating once again what a stupid fucking twat he was, and that he'd just done more than he ever need to prove that fact. And I looked down at my shirt, and the claret was dripping, some hitting my shirt and bouncing onto the floor, while everyone just looked at me, and him, agog.

He was advised to leave, which he did. I'd gone outside for a fag (can you believe it, you can't smoke in the White Swan anymore. Bastards.) and obviously the missus was clucking around me like a worried hen, and my mates asking me if I'm alright. I was fine. I was bleeding, a bit heavily, but there was no pain and I was fucking irate. A member of staff comes outside and asks me what I need, ambulance, police or both? Ambulance only, please, mate, I suggested. He disappeared.

We mill around outside waiting for the cavalry, only three squad cars turn up before the neenaw arrives. I ignore them. However, soon the boys in blue - these days, the boys in black with kevlar vests - are with me, asking what happened. Again, I explain that I've had an altercation with a friend, that I had wound him up, that he settled my pint-flinging with a glass to the face. But that I absolutely, no question, did not wish to press charges. Which must have seemed quite extraordinarily magnanimous.

The ambulance finally pulls up, and we walk around to it, jumping a low picket fence in the process. Beyond, there is an old man, fiftyish, grey beard and salt-n-pepper crew cut, Joseph Mengele glasses and a smart, woollen overcoat. As I jump, the policeman holding him turns to me and says: is this the bloke? Nah, nothing to do with it mate, I reply. You sure? Yes, positive. And I get in the van with the two paras, am joined by a copper, the lights and music are turned up to stun and we zoom to Selly Oak Hospital (the best in England - fact).

I wait ages, but I'm sure there are folks with far worse injuries than my own. One old bloke keeps appearing past the front of my cubicle, old, and bent, and scruffy, and most notably with his trousers around his ankles. On the way in, I'd seen three or four blokes in day-glo jackets milling about in the A&E foyer. Jesus, the cops must spend their whole night in this place. I later find out they are hired security: hospitals need bouncers in England. How shit is that?

Two coppers are with us now, the Asian chap who came with me in the ambulance, and another who had been at the pub. Remember that old chap with the glasses being held in the car park? Well - this great - when the cops arrived, he walked up to them saying "I'm the one you want, it's a fair cop." And so they arrested him. Now, in the hospital, copper two is asking me to confirm or deny the fellow's involvement. Of course, he was nothing to do with it, and that's what I tell them. Meanwhile, I refuse to make any official statement, and am forced to make do with a "pocketbook" statement, whereby I refuse and refute any legal pursuance of the matter.

My best friend is keeping me in line. The perpetrator's Christian name has been mentioned a couple of times, together with a few red herrings. Messages are being deleted from my phone as they arrive, it's like having the Stasi live with you. Information channels are controlled, and no excess information leaks out. Transgressors vill be shot.

We wait an age: my lady and my best friend are keeping things light and fluffy. I haven't seen what I look like, but by now, a six-inch-wide beard of blood starts beneath my neck and stretches all the way down the front of my shirt, and down my crotch. It's like I've sicked up gore on myself. My vital juices have started to congeal, I'm amazed at the thickness and viscosity. And, it's not red, not really. It's purple. A purpley-reddy-bronze. And the taste? The metal in it is palpable. I used to think it tasted like licking a copper coin. It doesn't, it's iron. It's the same taste you get if you leave a supplement on your tongue too long.

After the more needy are attended to, finally someone comes to see the bleeding chap who's making all the gags. It's probably not the best strategy for early service in your average A&E ward, but there you have it. I was really quite high. I'd had five pints of strong Continental lager, and now my blood was pumping down my face. Sharpens you up a bit, that. I'm examined by house officer Adrian, who thinks there's a definite x-ray, clean-up and stitch operation planned.

As he ferrets around in the wounds, my missus suddenly turns white and keels over. With regard to the evening's beer intake, I had been pissing like a trooper since my arrival, and had filled three of those cardboard bedbottles so far, all neatly stacked on a shelf above the sink. As she goes down, my best mate steps back to avoid her - knocking all of the bottles over.

One flies off the shelf and explodes everywhere, while the other two tip, lie down gently, and glug their contents down into the sink, from where it is splashing onto anything within a metre's range. Adrian is attending to the missus, who is spasming on the floor, making a terrible gutteral, choking noise.

At that moment, an orderly walks past, and taking one look at the scene within - me and the headwound, the fainted lady, the splashing piss bottles, the bemused companion - makes his instant assessment. "Nice," he imparts without skipping a beat, or breaking his stride.

Adrian soon has her back with us and looking a little perplexed as to why she's on the floor, and what she's being splashed with. Then the shift changes. Adrian is vamoosh, and enter Dr Banerjee. She is clearly from the efficient, get-it-done, move-on school. She decides that an x-ray will not be necessary, and tells me to follow her: it's a ten-minute job. And, like a lamb to the slaughter, I do. She and the staff nurse take me into the room, and ask me to lie down on my side. I'm asked about my allergies and so on - I have none - and so she gets to work.

This might hurt a bit, she says, and she's not wrong. It's worth mentioning at this point that, despite the fact that (and this is all before the age of ten...) I've faced a loaded sub-machine gun being waved angrily at me and my family, or that I've been dragged from my bike and gang-beaten, the thing I fear most is needles. You can shoot me or stab me all you like, but if you bring a needle near me, I'll do whatever you want. Promise.

The first jab goes in, and I hate it. I let out a sustained moan. Even when the novocaine kicks in, I can still feel the next couple. She's jabbing all the way around the ear, outside the wounds. Jab Four onwards is in a world of numb, but I can hear/feel the puncture, and then the rush of liquid. She's a bit heavy-handed, it must be said, but I'm sure delicacy is not high on her list of priorities just now.

She cleans up the wounds - I have lacerations to my earlobe, just above and in front of the ear, below and behind the ear, a nick to the outer edge of my ear about half-way up - and begins to suture them. I'm completely numbed, but you can still - at a few inches removed - "feel" each hook as the stitch is placed, feel each thread being pulled through your flesh, and finally the tightening of the knot, and clipping. As I lie here on my side, reading as many signs and sentences on the wall as possible, I wonder what humans did before local and general anaesthetics. Died, I suspect.

It seems a complication has arisen. The cuts are cleaned and stitched, only the bump above my ear is looking like a haematoma. This could be bad news. She's still prodding and pressing with all the finesse of stampeding wildebeeste, and so I gently suggest that - if she needs to carry on doing any more manhandling - perhaps another couple of shots of that lovely no-pain liquid? Is it hurting, she asks? Only when you push it like a rocket-launcher, I offer. She gets the syringes and another two shots hit the area. Bliss.

She has to extend the wound in order to allow the excess blood and clotting to come out. She does this, and all is fine. Another dousing in saline, and the wound is cleaned, then stitched. Finally, a large square gauze is fixed over my whole left ear zone, and strapped around my head with light swaddling bands. And we get my drugs, and I sign out, and we head home in a cab.

The taxi driver driver is a star. What happened mate? Had an altercation. What happened? I got hit across the ear with a pint glass. Who did it? A friend. A friend? I'd hate to meet your enemies, mate!

And on that note, I'm going to bed.