The Harbinger part 5

Returned from a stag weekend in a train from Paignton this afternoon, grubby and emasculated by the great big hormone of a group I have spent the last 48 hours in the company of.

The weekend had it’s highpoint with a gloriously perverted incident in the early hours of Sunday morning. The group, dressed in mackintoshes and false moustaches (save the stag, in a pink panther suit) shambled down from the village towards the moonlit Cornish beach. As we got nearer it became obvious that a little local event or other was taking place on the beach. The sound of the tide punctured by chatter, and flickers of light leapt above the prom as we approached the shingle.

There were in fact a group of ten or twelve people on the beach. The men were topless and four females were in attendance. Forming a circle round two of the men who were brawling amidst shouts of some excitement, clearer and clearer as we approached. I saw the stag and his best man quicken the pace and happily jog towards the locals. One of the men was winning the fight. This much was clear from forty yards, and I decided to keep my distance. Our panther of a stag hastened towards the brawl, in many ways more animal than human, urinating as he ran.

“Oi’m a nutter!! Oi’m a nutter!!” screamed the stag.

“Fuck off back to London!” replied a male spectator.

“But o’im a fookin nutter!!” shouted the groom-to-be again.

“Fuck off back to London! This is our life and you can fuck off,” said the chap once more.

“Yeah, fuck off!” echoed two, maybe three others in the local party, difficult to tell as they all looked remarkably similar in features and dress. A sort of polyester plus four in the tracksuit style, white tennis shoes, and close cropped hair. It was hard to tell through the fire-light, and perhaps the emotion of five or possibly seven gin and tonics was fugging my brains somewhat – but I had to fight the urge to ask the first man if perhaps he, like Liberace, was fond of surrounding himself with look-a-likes.

The pink stag, himself a policeman standing a full head higher than the average man, seemed amused by all this. He turned his attention to the unbelievably hairy man with the four-pack stomach who at this time was standing with his foot on his last victim’s head while pulling the other man’s leg back in excruciating fashion. The man in his grip was crying tears of agony.

“Come on Haystacks. Fuckin’ fight me!”

My god! The thought! Panther’s head gnawed out of its sod by some son-of-a-Thursday-morning bread and cheese sexton. I took off my shoes and watched as our stag and Haystacks squared up. That peculiar rough yet pleasant feeling afforded by shingle on bare feet reminded me of my driveway at home, where in summer I trip gaily and sockless over my own Three Colour shingle from B&Q, in transit from clipping the hedge or tinkering in the nethers of my quad bike in the garage.

Blows were exchanged. Panther hit hard and the power of his shots belied the fact that his opponent would have been a good two stones heavier. A cry went up from the locals – “Toohey! Toohey!” And Toohey responded with a sickening combination of prize-fighting brilliance. Somehow the groom rode this assault and punched Toohey to the ground, but the bigger man took the Pink Panther down with him.

The crowd screamed and bayed and begged and swayed. For him who is overcome by death no protection is there from kinsmen, I thought. Siddhartha must still have been with me since my afternoon with Buddhism last week. The local man next to me tapped my shoulder and just audibly over the commotion he said (and I had to have him repeat himself twice), “As a child I had a toy dog called Rags, a teddy bear and a rabbit, but only Rags meant anything to me. It sat on the dining table at meals, until one day it fell with its ears into the mint sauce. It was hung out many days to sweeten, and washed and scented, but I never felt the same about it.”

From somewhere though, in amongst the shouts for Toohey, louder and louder came another cry. “Panther! Panther! PA-N-THER!!” The panther camp was not exclusively the stag-party. Some of the local girls were leading the chant.

The group was about half and half in support of each man, and the epic scrap continued until finally Panther was forced to submit. He walked away with a girl on each arm, and I heard him cut quite a dash with a composed “But of course darling, as you were about to remark with such truth, it really is lovely to work off a hard evening on the drink.”

Toohey got me to thinking what Giant Haystacks would be doing were he still alive today. I’ve come to conclude that his physique would make him a perfect and formidable nightclub bouncer. It’s likely that with his cult UK celebrity he would still work on TV from time to time.

I cried tears of happiness such as you read of in books.