It was Mike Tyson who noted that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”. My plan had been to go for an early evening post-dinner walk — and it had been going fine until I got punched in the face.
It was around 7.30pm on a main road near my home. It was still light and the street was busy. I was minding my own business when I saw a man walking along the street coming from the opposite direction. I didn’t pay him any attention until he started punching a man who was a little ahead of me. I didn’t want to be next so I moved to the very edge of the pavement but the man was not to be denied. He turned towards me and started to punch me. He made contact two or three times before I was able to swerve past him and continue my walk.
In the immediate aftermath of this incident I was quite shaken up. I could not stop thinking about how much worse it could have turned out — my attacker could have punched me harder, causing me to hit my head on the pavement. I might not be writing this column if that had happened.
The randomness was unsettling — how do you protect yourself from something that makes no sense and has no explanation? What lessons do you take away? For the first few days these thoughts unnerved me but after a week the pain had subsided, the attack had become an anecdote and life rolled on. It is amazing and shocking what we can get used to.
I contacted the police immediately because it felt like the right thing to do but I had no expectations that anything would come of it. I never thought they would contact me to say they had identified and caught the attacker from CCTV footage and he was being charged — and they have not.
I am not surprised that he has not been caught — I would have been shocked if he had.
The road I live on is popular with local crack dealers. They pace around all day and I often have to walk past them as they are crouched on the pavement with their drug paraphernalia scattered around them. The ringleader is technically banned from our street. The word “technically” is important. The other day a neighbour heard him and his mates shouting “we own this street”, which was cocky but also true. It is annoying and a little scary to have such shady activity happening on our street, so I contacted my local MP. It felt like the right thing to do. I told him about the surge in violence in our area but I have zero expectations that anything meaningful will be done.
I should feel angry about the assault and the drug dealers — and I am — but the irony is that it is only because of them that I live in this area. If we didn’t have drug dealers and crazies on the street the property prices would be so high that I would not have been able to afford to buy a house.
So we dodge the punches and ignore the dealers. Life rolls on. It is amazing and shocking what we can get used to.
Cinema closures are so sad
I was sad to read that Odeon is to close five cinemas over the next few weeks. When I was in my teens I was a regular cinemagoer.
The first movie I ever saw in a cinema was Back to the Future, starring a younger Michael J Fox — and if I close my eyes I can still hear the hum of anticipation and pleasure as we waited for the film to start.
The habit of cinema-going, like the habit of buying a newspaper, is feeling like a relic of a bygone age.
This week Netflix announced that customers who want to share their account outside their homes must now pay an extra £4.99 per month.
Netflix has an amazing ability to be able to offer an inexhaustible supply of content, almost none of which I want to ever watch.
Perhaps the price rise might persuade a few people to stop streaming and rediscover the magic of the big screen.
