A moderately respectable public house in a sleepy English market town is not the sort of place where one would expect a sudden outbreak of extreme violence. However just a few days ago, a young man suffered a vicious flying rugby tackle from a complete stranger in just such a place. It must be said that the perpetrator of this unprovoked incident was not some drug-crazed juvenile delinquent or drink-fuelled football supporter. Nor was he some sociopathic product of an impoverished single-parent family living on a blighted urban housing estate. No, the attacker was a mild-mannered albeit somewhat maladroit middle-aged man of vaguely bookish habits. It was, I confess, myself. Yet the attack was almost as much a surprise to me as it was to the poor man and to my numerous other drenched victims.
While wholeheartedly agreeing with the need for wheelchair ramps, I can’t help wondering if they themselves might almost be a cause of people landing up in wheelchairs in the first place. Of course, I didn’t have time to frame that thought – or, indeed, any other thought except “Dear God … not again!” – as I tripped over one and found myself hurtling towards the pub's swing doors at well-neigh breakneck speed. Fortunately for me – although perhaps not for the unsuspecting and hapless people in my direct path – I broke nothing, although I did receive a painful crack on the head.
The next few milliseconds seemed to stretch an age, telescoping almost to infinity. Much like, in fact, the way in which scientific discourse stretches the events that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. That however is pure speculation; this is the lived experience of being at the heart of a microcosmic primeval explosion in a Dorset public house.
My hideous velocity barely checked by the doors, I catapulted into the pub at knee height and noticed a pair of legs immediately in front of me. In a split second of almost preternatural clarity, I came to the entirely misguided conclusion that that the best way to arrest my headlong flight would be to grab them. Incredibly, my reactions were almost as fast as my thought and with a sickening thud the stranger’s knees were in my grasp. This is, I think, where things started to go seriously wrong.
In a perfect demonstration of Newtonian physics and the transference of energy , I stopped; my not inconsiderable momentum being instantly transferred to the stranger who equally instantly plunged to the floor. I am not quite sure of the rules determining the multiplications and bifurcations of kinetic energy … but something along those lines must explain the parabola that the drinks tray he had been holding described as it, the glasses and their contents flew onwards in much the same direction as my plump body had been travelling when I first entered. Of course, the trajectory would have been higher and - given the reduced mass and the added kinetic energy from my victim's fall - the velocity relatively greater.
After this, I rather lost my presence of mind, and events became more than a little confused. There were quite a few crashes, shattering noises, gasps and curses around me and, as I lay prone and stunned on the carpet amidst the devastation, I recall noticing that I hadn’t even been splashed - somewhat odd given that rule about equal and opposite forces. Certainly lots of other people were, although fortunately there didn’t appear to have been any injuries, at least none of an especially life-threatening nature.
Equally oddly no one threatened to thump me and a tray of replacement drinks seemed to entirely settle the matter with my young victims. Perhaps they were subdued by the weirdness of it all; perhaps my sudden incursion into their lives had given them their first ‘intimations of mortality’ and forced them to look at the awful darkness unpinning all existence. Perhaps they were just slightly shell-shocked. Who knows? But when I was their age, had I been abruptly thrown to the ground and my drinks spilled by a stout middle aged man, I doubt if I would have shown quite as much forbearance. Indeed, I might have turned quite violent.
