Brum Brum
This is the first pinkwookie post to be brought to you live from Manchester…well the server that is, not myself. Onto January 2008 finally. Before the usual moaning that people mention of how far back in the past I am writing about, here’s a pic of how much trying and giving up this post has endured from myself.
Tries
Yes, that’s right. This post has been over 7 months in the making.
Back where my last post left off, I mentioned that there was indeed a light at the end of the Peckham, which indeed did result in me moving out of the aforementioned South East London town. After a couple of meet-ups with Geffy, and a decision on a suitable digs we decided on a place in Bow in East London. Even after enduring the joys of moving just over a month before, I was doing it all over again. Now that I think of it, I have moved house every year of my life since 2002. Yes that’s moving house every year, for 8 years straight. You could argue that it makes me incredibly good at it I guess.
I believe it was the weekend that I moved in that my Director informed me that my testing services were needed in Birmingham on the Monday. I was to work with two of the guys, whose homes were in Ireland, that I met during the induction for the job. Initially I was supposed to be there for two weeks, but it ended up being about 6 months. Looking back retrospectively, apart from Friday evenings, from moving into our flat in London in February, the first time I saw it during a weekday was in July.
Anyway back to Brum, as the guys who were already there, had been there a while, they had managed to book a 2 bedroom apartment there. Luckily however, they were on hand to suggest a decent hotel nearby to where we would work and also suggested the ones to steer clear of. I must confess really looking forward to some of the perks of being in Birmingham, mainly the £25 per day that I would have to spend on food, I was living the dream there!
After arriving in Brum rather late and having minor difficulties with finding the hotel, I went to visit the guys’ apartment which was a pretty cool pad. As I’m sure you’re wondering, me visiting a new place wouldn’t be complete without a strange event from happening, such as being mugged, or losing my wallet and Birmingham was no exception. You know the little location interludes you get in films? I mean where the location is new and it shows a preview of the locale like sandy beaches, people buying fruit from the local market, etc. etc. and then the name comes up at the bottom. Well, for me and Birmingham, it would be utterly dark at night time and the camera would hover over a bunch of chavs kicking a guy in the street within an inch of his life…[cue text]
Birmingham, February 2008
On my third day in Brum after work, we all decided to go to the cinema to see Cloverfield. A most excellent plan, which was only hampered by the then freezing cold. On the way we noticed a poor chap lying on the floor in the middle of the street with a few people kicking at him. Possibly because of my optimism about people, I thought it was just people goofing around until I saw the copious amounts of red fluid that is normally supposed to be under your skin. It was quite a harrowing experience because the guy was out cold.
The events that followed as most witnesses will say happened very quickly. I rang up an ambulance for the poor bloke, whilst Jonathan and Sean tried to fend off the other attackers who left rather promptly. Probably my first time ringing up emergency services (and hopefully my final), I was in a bit of disbelief that my and everyone else’s experiences to call centres replicated themselves here; after asking for an ambulance, I was actually passed through to the wrong person-unbelievable! Although the woman could help me, she said “Umm I don’t know how you got through to this number” Which isn’t exactly what you want to hear when you’re next to a person that needs urgent medical attention. Still, she was probably some supervisor that wasn’t supposed to be operational and helped me by passing me through to the correct person who promptly helped me. As you can imagine, my directions for the ambulance weren’t exactly specific, what with there being no roadsigns nearby and it being only my third day there. I told them a name of a theatre which we were next to which seemed to be enough and I was later told that they were verifying the incident on the CCTV camera above us. Since fighting was flaring up again which my friends were trying to dissipate, I requested the assistance of the old bill too.
Whilst trying to keep the guy warm and talking to him (even though he wasn’t talking back as he was still out) one of the girls that was already there when we got there (possibly co-operating with the kicking) said that it was her brother and then went into his wallet and took money out…that’s a new low in my opinion. Jonathan acted swiftly by taking it off her and putting it back, to which he received a punch in return. Unbelievably another guy came out of nowhere and took the whole bloomin’ wallet and rushed off (he was caught nearby by police). So anyway, after what seemed like ages, the police turned up and detained the girl in their car. She was obviously up to no good, what after trying to nick money, claiming that the guy was her brother, then her father and later on her cousin something didn’t quite add up.
By the time the ambulance got here, the guy was just coming to and after the paramedics checked him out, he actually managed to climb into the stretcher himself which was a bit of a relief because I thought it may be more serious. It turns out that he had some kind of fit after the stress and injuries of being attacked which is why he was unconscious. We all had to wait for ages in the freezing cold so we could each give a statement to the police too. Jonathan also had to go the police station to make a formal statement, rather him than me because I was busy trying to help the guy whilst speaking to the ambulance people whilst not paying much attention to what was happening around me. Our night, perhaps chivalrous was pretty much ruined; by that time we had missed Cloverfield by miles and went back to the guys apartment to wait for Jonathan who took ages in making the statement.
Looking back on it us 3 guys took on rather Battlefield-esque roles. I took on the role of Medic, Jonathan was assault and Sean was support. Granted I’m not sure where sniper or demolitions would fit into this picture but I digress with my dubiously accurate analogies. Anyway we decided to see the Cloverfield the next day rushing through the freezing cold ignoring everyone. Yes, I think that film is good.
We do have a section now on how it all turned out. Jonathan, as he was marked down as a witness was contacted by Birmingham police about a month after and was told that the victim did not want to press charges (probably because he knew the attackers). We were all suitably enraged about this all, partly because of the horrible things that happened to him, but also because a lot of our efforts to help the guy were sort of in vain if he didn’t do anything about it. Still there was nothing we could do about that.