Ready to Beat

It struck me today that of all the places you would least expect a fight, Pret a Manger would be it.

It doesn’t open late, it sells no alcohol, the food is all good, nothnig is ever off, everyone who goes there (me included) has an air of ponciness and self-importance about them and let’s face it, it’s too expensive for riff-raff.

Talking of fights, I was a little curt with an unsuspecting young lady serving me at my regular chemist, the Vineyard on Elgin Avenue on Saturday.

Recall, this was when I had to drop my daughters off early, because there’s always a reason to impinge on my time. It’s how their mother likes it.

My youngest needed the loo - I asked at the counter and although they have the facility, the young lady recommended that I take my 9-year-old to the pub. Twice. You know, the kind of place where half-drunk, unwillingly-drugged women get gang-raped in the toilets, whilst being recorded on some helpful bystander’s mobile ‘phone.

I utterly despise pubs. I used to tolerate them to watch football, when my passion for the sport over-rode my reason and my fear. People go to pubs to take a drug which causes untold harm to their health, to society and to the bodies of those unfortunates battered as a by-product of over-indulgence in a substance that smells uncannily like urine.

It’s not that my father was an alcoholic before turning into the most dignified, courageous and principled man I’ve ever known, though it didn’t help. It’s not Islam either. I’m 90% sure that I wouldn’t have been a drinker had I not been Muslim, though being Muslim helps.

It’s watching the behaviour of people who have had a drink or three deteriorate from occasional flashes of intelligence to a simulacrum of an intelligent being. People become really stupid after a drink. They are not in possession of their senses. They talk garbage. “In Vino Veritas” possibly, “In Vino Vulgaris” more likely.

My daughters and I had just got off a bus where three drunken East Europeans sat near us and started playing music loudly. Oh - and there was a guy out of his skull smoking too. You meet the nicest people in a Honda, but not on a bus mate. So drinkers and their establishments were not scoring very highly with us when this young lady offered the pub to us as a solution for a child’s erratic bladder.

“No thanks. We’re Muslims. We don’t do pubs. I’d rather she wet herself than let her in that place. But thanks anyway”

After a few minutes, and having found somewhere suitable and child-friendly, I felt bad. There was no call for my self-righteous and pointless outburst. I love that chemist anyway, they’re always helping me out. So I went back and did what is right. I apologised. Without explanation and without expectation of my repentance being accepted with grace. Funny thing happened, nobody had been offended, they were apologetic themselves and everything was fine.

I like apologising when I’m really wrong. It’s best not to have any reserveration about the apology either. It makes me feel better to occasionally humble myself. To look someone in the eye and for them to know that you realise you were at fault. That you will try to be better. That they were not at fault. That their day should not be ruined for my sins. It’s not fawning - that’s pathetic. It’s having the moral courage to hold up your hand when you’re genuinely wrong and saying you’re genuinely sorry. I’m not talking about the pathetic “I’m sorry if you feel” bullshit that my ex picked up at an assertiveness class either. That is an attack, not an apology. Suddenly it’s about my supposed feelings, and not the person’s behaviour.

I mean a proper “Sorry. It was my fault. I messed up and will be more careful in the future.”

I still fucking hate pubs though.