Tony Parsons on Life, Death and Breakfast. Tony Parsons

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       Two When Yobs Swear

      Sooner or later you will find yourself in a situation. It may not happen for ten years. It could be tonight. But it is coming-be sure of that – and when it arrives you will have the choice between the only two buttons that really matter on your biological dashboard.

      Fight or flight?

      You might be in a bar. You might be in a restaurant. It could be at the end of your road or it could be on a tropical island. You might be standing outside your home. The location doesn’t matter. This is how it will be: you will be confronted by in-appropriate behaviour that intrudes upon those you love. Effing and blinding and talk of a graphically sexual nature. You know the kind of thing. And, in an instant, you will have to decide – Do I say something?

      Or do I say nothing?

      This is the terrible thing. This is the heart of the matter. You will not be alone. You will be in company – with your girlfriend or wife, or with your children, even if they have yet to be born-people who look to you to protect them from the worst of this world.

      And there will be a cackling mob of pimply cavemen, every other gormless word an expletive, talking about bitches and blow-jobs and easy birds. They will bring their world into your world and you will have to decide, in a terrifying instant, what to do.

      Even if what you do is nothing.

      You can get killed for saying something. Even a mild rebuke can get you the death sentence, effective immediately. Men die for speaking up.

      But these lads are loud – too loud to be ignored. By you or your woman or your child. Do you want your kid to listen to this stuff? Or do you risk making him or her an orphan?

      Yobs are so touchy these days, that’s the problem. Yobs are more sensitive than they have ever been in yob history. They react to the mildest rebuke with murderous rage. The average hoodie is thin-skinned beyond belief, his self-esteem so fragile that any criticism is almost guaranteed to explode into physical confrontation.

      One thing is certain: reasoning with them does not work. Appealing to their better nature is a waste of time – they don’t have one. If, when yobs swear, you tell them to turn down the volume, you’d better be prepared to go all the way.

      Because they will be.

      Context is everything. I don’t advocate going around telling every foul-mouthed moron to shut his filthy cakehole. It does not bother me at all if I am at a football match and the bloke in the seat behind me is shouting about ‘stupid cunts’. The stupid cunts at football matches don’t bother me. I don’t much care what anyone says if I am alone. But if I am out with my family and it happens – in a restaurant, in a park, in a hotel bar-then that’s different.

      Nothing will get me to keep my mouth shut. And it is nothing to do with bravery. I just can’t accept foul-mouthed strangers entering my daughter’s world. And I am very happy to kick, gouge and claw while rolling in the dirt to make my point.

      Stupid, really. I am not much good to my daughter if some psycho–chav buries his blade in my heart. And what a waste – to lose your life because you asked some pathetic piece of pond scum-and his mates, because they are invariably mob-hande – to watch his potty mouth.

      But there is nothing rational about the flight-or-fight mechanism. It is not a debating society. It is not as though you carefully weigh the options and then go with one or the other. The moment you make your decision is here and gone before you know it.

      And suddenly you are either bowing your craven head because safety is the wisest course of action, or you are confronting a group of leering teenagers-because sometimes the stupid thing is also the right thing.

      And then you ask yourself: Can I take them? These leering strangers – will they put me in the A&E or the graveyard?

      Almost certainly, all things considered, you can’t take them. They are younger than you, stronger than you, and you are the one who is flying solo. They are what the media call multiple assailants.

      But what gets you through is that – if you are mad enough to say something in the first place-you are inevitably a lot angrier than they are.

      You come out of nowhere, seething with rage, right in their faces – they haven’t been trying to offend your small child. You’re ready to rumble, full of that righteous, blood-pumping juice where you just don’t care what happens to you. And that might СКАЧАТЬ