When Re-enacting Scenes From 'Scum' For A Bit Of A Laugh Goes Wrong

Obviously, when you're trying to write a blog about Nottingham, it would be very easy to just sit down and record every violent incident that was reported in the Evening Post. I don't like doing that - for one, it gives off a totally false impression of a city that has taken an absolute pasting from the media. But mainly because I'd have been chained to this laptop 24 hours a day, sitting on an Kilimanjaro of my own excrement, with my fingers worn to bloody stubs. So I try to stay away from it whenever possible.

And then a story like this comes along, and you don't know what to think. So let's begin at the beginning...

A Man was left bleeding and unconscious after a "play fight" with pool balls in socks.

(random bell-end) had taken the makeshift weapons into the city centre "for protection" on a night out with his cousin, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

OK, three things are automatically springing to mind here;

1. I dunno about you, but when the words 'play fight' spring to mind, I think of me picking up my nephew and chucking him on the sofa like the Undertaker, or me and a mate punching each other on the shoulder when we've got leather jackets on, like John Travolta and Kenickie in Grease. There doesn't seem to be anything fun about swinging about a pool ball in a sock and whacking your mate on the head with it, like you were Ray Winstone and he were Phil Daniels.

2. If you need to take a weapon into town 'for protection', maybe God is telling you that you shouldn't really be going into town that night.

3. This might be just me, but who the fuck apart from cast members of The Beverley Hillbillies goes out on the batter with their cousin? I've got loads of cousins, and I only ever see them at funerals. It's not that I dislike 'em or owt; I just have mates.

But after drinking a large amount of alcohol on August 17, the pair began hitting each other with them in Long Row, in the city centre.

OK, bear with me a minute, because I'm having trouble with this one; how badly kaylide do you have to get before you start thinking that stoving your cousin's head in with a mace constructed by something whipped off a pool table and half of summat you bought from Primark is a really good way to inject a bit of fun into your night out?

"Ah man, this is shit and there's no fanneh abaht - shall weh goo to Social?"

"No mate - full o' foo-kin' students"

"Shall weh gerra kebab?"

"Norrungreh"

"Shall weh goo on the bandits?"

"Foo-kin skint, youth"

"Shall weh, I dunno...clonk each other in the foo-kin 'ead with them pool balls in socks we brung aht?"

"Foo-kinYEAH! I forrgorrabaht them. MINT! You go fost! Tee hee!"

Gareth Gimson, prosecuting, said: "Officers on patrol were told by a member of the public about some sort of disturbance.

"Police saw two men and were concerned that one of them had some sort of head injury.

"One pool ball was handed to an officer at the scene. A sock was on the floor next to a pool of blood. Another sock containing a pool ball was also found near to the pool of blood."

Next time you're in the pub and you're having a moan about 'Babylon', recall this story and remember; this is what the police have to do every fucking day. If your Mam's been burgled again, and it's taken the coppers ages to come round, don't blame New Labour or the council or the New World Order; it's because they've had to wipe the arses of a couple of mongs from the more mediaeval parts of Nottinghamshire who were working out which one of them was the Daddy-Uncle-Brother.

In mitigation, the court was told the cousins were having a "play fight" which went wrong.

No shit.

The defendant had an alcohol problem

Even less shit than the no shit that went before.

...but was working to cut down his drinking, the court was told. He told police he was carrying the ball and sock because he was having trouble with some drug dealers.

Now then, I don't know that much about drug dealers in Nottingham, but I'm guessing that they may just have access to weapons that could easily counteract someone who had to fumble about in his jacket pocket for five minutes, and then check that he was holding the right end of a sock so the pool ball wouldn't fall out, and then whirl it about for a bit. It seems to be about as useful a pissed-off dealer-deterrent as a bit of fire on a stick, or a Spongebob balloon on some string.

Mr Gimson said: "He told police he would have used them if trouble had come his way. He said it had been an accident that (his cousin) had suffered the injury." He said the prosecution accepted it was nothing more sinister.

So there you have it: going into town and pitching yoursen in the lottery of being in the same pub on a Saturday night as a couple of cast members from Deliverance who've decided to take out pool balls in a sock - Officially Not Sinister.