I’m trying to write a blog post every day, or damn near enough every day, at the minute. I do diaries and journaling and stuff offline, but this space – public, but only read by a few hundred at most – is one I’d like to explore a bit more away from the stream of reviews, show recaps, and “what I did at the weekend” folk, comedy, and music adventures.

Not that those are going anywhere.

Unfortunately the main thing I want to write about is a guy, who elbowed his way, uninvited, into the narrative of my day, and made himself the main character through his aggressive sense of entitlement and barely contained potential for violence.

This is of course really unusual behaviour for a man, which is why I thought I’d better write it down.

It happened at Brighton Folk Choir’s weekly practice at the Rose Hill. It was our first of the term, and we had some special guests joining us – Morris Dancers and Mummer’s Players, with whom we were rehearsing for our Wassail at Hurstpierpoint this coming Saturday.

During the interval, during which most attendees were drinking tea, catching up after the break, and chatting about Christmas and New Year, and such like, a young, short, drunk, white man came in and started hassling my friend, lover, and band colleague Martha for somewhere to charge his phone.

He was drunk, and very probably high, and seemed to think Martha’s card reader (she takes the monies) was somehow a phone charger.

“I just want somewhere to charge my phone”, he slurred.

“This is a private event, you need to leave – we’re rehearsing for a play”, explained Martha, patiently but firmly, over and over again. “The pub is closed.”

“It looks pretty fucking open to me”.

Martha continued to be firm with him, and he wandered off to find a charging point around the other side of the bar. I followed him, gesturing to Martha that I’d keep an eye on him. He moved to go behind the bar, and I stopped him, and he grabbed a battery pack charger from the bar itself, and grabbed it and put it under his clothes.

“You can’t take that,” I said, and tried to get it back off him. I told him again he had to leave, and he threatened to beat me up, and said his friend was outside and he needed to charge his phone. I grabbed him firmly by the jacket, and again said he had to give the charger back and get out. He threatened to “sort me out”, and said there would be “serious consequences” if I tried to stop him taking the charger.

At this point absolutely no-one else in the pub – other than Martha, who sensibly had stayed down in the other section – had even noticed anything was going on.

So I put my best “MC” voice on, and said, loudly, “this man is trying to steal someone’s charger, and he won’t leave. I’d like some help here, please”.

I said a few more words to this effect, until Jules, the bar’s manager who lives upstairs, came down, immediately clocked the situation, unlocked the other door, and helped me usher the guy outside. “If you kick me out, I’ll kick the door down”, he said, but his heart wasn’t in it now he was outnumbered, and got kicked out of the pub.

He briefly threatened to come back in via the other door, which we locked. And, after the bar guy kindly at least gave him his charging cable that he’d dropped on the floor near Martha, that was that, and we were able to carry on with our rehearsal.

I was left feeling discombobulated and a little shaken. I was phyiscally assaulted last year – I haven’t written about this yet, but I have notes, and shall do when the time is right – and since two young guys drove into me and then verbally abused me, while I was still lying on the pavement, back in 2020, there is something mildly triggering about aggressive male shouting and threats – clearly bollocks or not – of violence.

Fortunately fellow Highchurch, Elle, was in the vicinty, and after joking why it was always me that gets into these situations, she said some genuinely kind and reassuring things. And other members of the choir thanked me also, and the second half – in which I was able to dress up as a pig in favour of Right To Roam – was an absolute hoot.

For half an hour there, I wasn’t sure whether to dignify this drunk young man with the honour of being remembered. But writing helps me process (I also had a lovely phone conversation about all of the above), even if it does also give me the occasional curse of remembering. The human mind is very falliable and even some details of what happened earlier are already blurred into unreality, but if nothing else, tonight was a reminder that I’m surrounded by some lovely people, I’ve found my tribe (indeed, I have found several of my tribes), and I’m stronger and less cowardly than I look (no-one wants to be chucked out of a pub by a guy in a fox-themed tank top).

And, of course, tomorrow is another day.