Saturday 5 June 2010

On Heros and Twits

There is a fine line between being a hero and being a twit. A very fine line indeed. 


Simple acts of heroism can be converted into twittishness in the highest order within seconds. Not just twittishness though - extremely embarassing twittishness, which is worse.

Take for example the time my friends and I cycled over Holme Moss in celebration of the Sergeant Major's birthday (lord knows why). We must have been around 11 years old and we slogged our way over the top of the sweaty hill to a long gratifying free wheel on the other side. In order to cool ourselves down, we took a dip in a nearby river - parking our bikes up some way down the road and walking the last bit to a suitable pond.

The Sergeant Major's Dad then came wandering along afterwards in order to enact repairs on the Sergeant Major's broken bike. A gentle type, he got on with his work quietly. Until disturbed by some bruiser of a man who was playing at being a hero.

The man mistook the intentions of said Dad for those of stealing bikes from poor 11 year old kids. He decided that the most heroic thing to do, was to punch the poor Dad in the face in order that he would be forever put off from his thieving ways. Unfortunately, the hero spotted his mistake very shortly afterwards and was forced to beat a rapid running retreat when threatened with the police (we thought this event was hilarious at the time, but I am pretty sure that our friend's dad did not). 

An embarrassed twit, right?

Last week I went on the annual holiday with my friends in a town called Coimbra in Portugal (and once again I came back sick). On one of the nights we encouraged some unfortunate passing Japanese tourists that it would be a good idea to engage in some drinking games with some hardened British drinkers (I am referring to my friends, not to me!).

The game in question was Fu's phone. Its rules are simple. My friend is called Fu. He has a phone.  On that phone is a randon number generator (sometimes known as a stopwatch). He reads numbers out which correspond to numbers pre-allocated to our drinkers. When their number is read out - they have to drink. Simple but effective.

Anyway after playing said game for quite some time with our new friends the highly bemused (and rapidly deteriorating) Japanese tourists we all decided to go to a club.

The clubs in Coimbre, however are a massive pain in the arse. 

Basically the way they have it set up is that you get a card on the way in and every time you order a drink, the barman stamps said card and you pay for your drinks on the way out. Saves time right? 

Wrong. For all that they do is to ensure that every single person in the club has to queue up to pay at the end of the night and tempers flare as people just want to go home. This plays havoc with my mild self diagnosed claustrophobia. There aren't even fire escapes you can break out of - which is worrying.

So, there we were in the club with some inebriated Japanese friends. They seemed to be having a good time when we were in there. Only when we decided to leave we found that one guy had left (we found him wandering the street near our hostel later that night), one guy was sitting in the street with his face in his hands, and the girl that they were with was unable to leave the club as she had lost her card and had no money to pay the extortionate 50 euro fine (incidentally we decided later that if such clubs existed in the UK, everybody would go in drink as much as they could and then 'lose' their card and pay 50 euros to get out).

But more than that, the manager of said club was being rude to the poor upset girl, demanding that she find the money. She came up to me and told me he was making racist comments to her and that he had made some less than above board suggestions as to how she might pay her way out.

That was enough for me. Hw dare he make such suggestions! I got my nearest friend (the Lawyer) as back up and squared up to the manager, aiming to give him a piece of British what for! 

...then I realised who I am and where I was - so I just gave him 50 euros instead. 

The only thing is, that when I woke in the morning (read afternoon) with a light feeling in my wallet, I re-assessed some of my key memories. Memories which were substantially impacted upon by Fu's bloody phone. 

I had gone to bed thinking I was some kind of knight in shining armour to that poor girl. 

I had woken up realising I had just been done over 50 euros.