I Was a Swivel Chair (Part 3)- Witness No.1
By Milo | October 3, 2005
One night after work and a couple of drinks in the pub Craig and I walked home along Fountainbridge. We passed a group of neds hanging around a car who shouted something at us but we ignored them and carried along the road. Craig lived on Viewforth whilst I lived further along on Bryson Road so he took a left. Strangely, given what was to happen, he asked me if I wanted to walk the long way, due to the presence of the neds. I was blasé though and insisted I would be fine going my normal route.
I continued along but the neds were gaining on me. There was quite a big group of them, girls and boys. They didn’t look that old and I was completely oblivious to any danger they might pose. I had the illusion of youthful invincibility, increased to overconfident stupidity after a couple of premium lagers. After all I had never gotten into any serious trouble prior to that, despite a few close scrapes. I decided I wasn’t going to let them change how I would ordinarily behave and so I popped into the phone box and called home to check if we had any milk. The neds circled the phone box. They slammed their fists against the glass and shouted some abuse. I remember saying to Mel something like “there are some wee idiots banging on the glass so I’m going to go now, see you soon”. I still didn’t feel the necessary survival signal of fear which would have made me act sensibly and run away.
I emerged from the phone box and the little bastards danced round me making unintelligible taunts like a cross between the thugs in a Clockwork Orange and the monkeys in 2001. Then I made the fatal mistake, although whether anything I did at this stage would have made a difference to the final result I don’t know. I turned round and shouted at them to fuck off. I only remembered that part later on and can still barely remember the next few minutes but I remember them coming towards me. The rest I only know for sure as it was later told to me by the Police, as reported to them by someone who was watching from the safety of their flat several storeys up, and by the Fountainbridge brewery’s CCTV cameras which were whirring silently and recording the whole thing. Two of the blokes whacked me round the head, and I must have fell to the floor. (needless to say, I was never a fighter). Then at least two of them kicked me in the head repeatedly and with great gusto until my jaw broke in two places.
I came to a while later. I was lying outside the Fountainbridge pub- how come no-one had seen what was happening and come out to stop it? I could barely see for the blood, and even then only out of one eye. I managed to get up and staggered along the road to my flat. I rang the buzzer and Mel let me in. She was obviously horrified by the sight of me, one eye completely closed over and blood everywhere. As far as I remember she called a taxi and I was taken to hospital.
I was eventually taken to St. John’s hospital in Livingstone where I had to have an operation on my jaw, and two metal plates were inserted. The incident gave me a massive kick in the arse creatively. I’d been scribbling lyrics for a while and other bits of writing but I’d never dared to share them with anyone. Now that I’d randomly faced, if not death, at least, unpredicted pain, I felt my own mortality for the first time. I had to do something with all the ideas floating round my badly battered head.
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