I have been in exactly three proper fights in my life. I know that probably sounds like a lot to you, the average Nottinghamian, but I’m from a small Southern Alberta town and there’s not a lot to do out there. Caving each others faces in is outranked only by ‘designing beer bongs’ and ‘burning stuff’ in the list of top ten prairie pastimes. Growing up in Brooks and only being involved in three fights makes me a bit of a pantywaist by Albertan standards

My first fight was a result of a junior high intramural floor hockey kerfuffle with a kid named Mike. This is exactly how the fight went:

1. Mike put me in a headlock, threw me to the ground, sat on top of me and asked; “Do you give up?”
2. I said; “No!”
3. He punched me in the face
4. I said; “Yes!”
5. He got off me and went back to his floor hockey game while I had a bit of a cry.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: I am truly crap at fighting. I swore I would never put myself through that again. It took a little thing called ‘New Year’s Eve’ to make me break that promise. Twice. I’ve never been much of a scrapper, even when I’ve had a few. On a normal night out when my body has decided I’ve had too much to drink, my stomach sends a signal to my brain that says, “Screw being social – fried chicken and bed are now more important than breathing.”

Thirty minutes later, I am tucked up in bed covered head-to-toe in the Colonel’s spices while my mates (and often my wife) are back at the bar wondering where I’ve gotten to. People who know me back home have long gotten used to my disappearing act and dubbed the phenomenon my ‘Robbie Auto-pilot’. Robbie Auto-pilot usually kicks in sometime around the fourth or fifth pint, which has saved me from making a dickhead of myself many times. I love Robbie Auto-pilot.

New Year’s Eve is Robbie Auto-pilot poison. Robbie Auto-pilot doesn’t understand why it’s so important to drink J-Bombs and champagne at midnight, or why no one will let him go home. What these people don’t understand is that if Robbie Auto-pilot is stopped from leaving and forced to carry on drinking past his limit, he becomes Robbie-Asshole. And the only way to get Robbie-Asshole back into his box is to punch him back in.

My second fight started at the end of the night on New Year’s Eve 1999. Robbie Auto-pilot had a foot out the door, but was stopped by my best mate, who turned him back in and bought him a bottle of champagne. Robbie-Asshole repaid him for his generosity by calling his girlfriend a whore. I have no recollection of what happened next; I do know that I woke up the next morning with a sore face and a distinct absence of fried chicken. My third fight happened two New Year’s Eve’s later; different guy, same insult, same result. (Who even says ‘whore’ anyway? It’s a ridiculous word. I don’t know where Robbie-asshole has picked this up; only 70s porn stars and saloon owners in spaghetti westerns say ‘whore’).

It goes without saying that NYE – like most things which involve copious amounts of alcohol – is taken more serious over here than it is back in Canada. For starters, my pals back home have learned that if Robbie Auto-pilot wants to go home – even if it’s ten to midnight on New Year’s Eve – it’s best to let him go. My English mates aren’t quite as enlightened; previous attempts to at that time were met with utter contempt. Also, you people have this horrible ritual called ‘rounds’, and on 31 December, these rounds are expensive. If I’ve bought a round of champagne for everyone, I can’t leave before I get my own back, because while Robbie Autopilot has my personal safety at heart, he’s not an idiot.

New Year’s Eve is celebrated in this city the same cack-handed way that every other holiday outside of Christmas is celebrated. It always starts with good intentions; Bands are booked, tickets are printed, champagne is chilled, party poppers are bought. But by half ten the champagne’s been quaffed, the poppers popped and the bar is a sweaty, steaming mass of shouting, slobbering faces, gyrating arms and legs and flying sparkly bits; Frankly, you’re lucky to get out alive. In my first New Year’s Eve over here, I was rugby-tackled by a massive guy dressed as Dennis the Menace. I escaped a severe humping by said man, but only just.

My second limey New Year’s Eve started with tequila shots and ended in me dislocating my shoulder wrestling a mate on the sidewalk. We actually counted down to 1am that night; everyone was so paralytic that no one noticed that midnight had passed. Oh, and last year my brother-in-law pulled me away from the bar before Robbie-Asshole got my face pounded in for calling a woman at the bar a, quote, “Whoring she-chav”.

This year, the idea of going to a New Years party in fancy dress is being bandied about. Ordinarily, I despise fancy dress, but it might be a good idea for my own protection. I’ve decided to go either as Pudsey Bear or as George Osborne, the thinking being that no one can get angry at a giant Pudsey bear, no matter how sweary it gets, while if I go dressed as George Osborne, people would half expect me to call them ‘whores’. I could walk the streets kicking pensioners and disabled people in the balls with boots made from gold bullion and people would think it was part of the act. Oh, look at that crazy George Osborne; he’s set that guy in the wheelchair on fire, what a nut!

I will try to make sure Robbie Auto-pilot remains intact this year, but if you do happen to see a
bloodied Pudsey on the street this New Year’s Eve walking around aimlessly, don’t speak to him – just point him into the nearest SFC. He’ll take it from there.

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Writers note:  This column was written last July in preparation for the August issue of LeftLion.  Obviously, the beautiful hosepipe-ban-inducing weather we were having had (in true British fashion) gone to shit shortly after this article was written. Some day I will learn that writing about current events in a column that comes out bi-monthly is a stupid idea.  Just pretend you’re reading this last July. In fact, I’d recommend closing the curtains and reading it in front of a 1000 watt bulb.
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Ah, Summertime. Jumping fish, high cotton, rich daddies and good-looking mommas. It’s been wonderful, hasn’t it? This summer has been so good that I can hardly believe I’m in England. Isn’t that cause to celebrate? Of course not, dummy – that just gives Brits more to moan about.

Just this minute, I have had a British woman complain to me about the heat. It is 25 degrees outside. Twenty five. How have you people survived this long? In other countries, if the temperature dips below fifteen, people put on a jacket. If it rises above 23, they wear shorts. In England, if the temperature rises or falls out of that range, people die.

A discussion on which factor sunscreen one should wear is a twenty-minute conversation in this country. Balancing ‘acquiring a tan’ with ‘not dying of skin cancer’ is a tricky business when you’re born with that pale blue British skin. It wouldn’t be so difficult to choose the right sunscreen if the weather forecasters could actually predict the weather more than fifteen minutes in advance.

I don’t know why they bother with a three-day forecast; they’d be more accurate if, from March to August, they said “sunny breaks, low to mid twenties with a chance of showers” every single day. They’d get it right more often than they do now with all their fancy weather-detecting equipment. Cameron should forget canning thousands of public sector workers to save some cash; he could just sell off a couple of BBC Doppler radars.

This summer has also changed my mind about chavs. They aren’t a pinheaded menace at all. They’re actually more evolved than the rest of us; higher beings who’ve developed a gene that makes them impervious to the heat. In June when we had that really hot spell (it actually got to twenty eight one day), I saw a chav standing at the train station dressed in heavy grey sweatpants, a massive grey hoodie and a black nylon jacket. He didn’t seem bothered at all – he just stood, cool as a cucumber, poking at his stolen mobile. I was in a t-shirt and shorts and was sweating like I had just ingested the Sun.

But it’s not just the young chavs; the old, tubby, bald-headed chavs who walk around town wearing nothing but pimp shades, England shorts and a pint of Carlsberg don’t feel the heat either. They don’t bother with sunscreen at all, and yet their bald heads and man-tits are both perfectly bronzed, without a hint of sunburn or melanoma. Aside from the slight leathery-ness of the man-tits and the beach ball paunches, you’d almost say they look healthy. Glowing, even.

Unfortunately for me, I seem to have adopted the (non-chav) British sensitivity to the heat. I actually caught myself on a particularly hot day saying to my wife; “Man, it’s hot outside, I think I prefer cycling in the rain than in this bloody heat”. Yes, I moaned about having to cycle on a sunny day. How good is my life that cycling on a sunny day is my biggest worry? It could have only been a more British move if I did it sporting a mitt full of sovs and scoffing a chip cob. After I said it, my wife and I stared at each other in silence for a few awkward moments before turning and walking away, pretending it had never happened.

The most important thing about Summer, however, it that it absolutely sucks if you’re a British sports fan. It’s not brilliant at any time of the year, really, but it’s especially crap between June and August. I’m not even going to get into the football – my God that was awful, but at least that pain is only inflicted on us every four years – but Wimbledon does it to us every year.

Watching Wimbledon is like having a delicious steak dangled high over your head that’s lowered slightly every time Murray advances. At first the steak is so high that you can barely see it. You say to yourself; “Sure, steak would be fantastic, but there’s no point in even dreaming about it, just look how high it is; I’ll just have river trout and runner beans instead.” But then Murray beats some shmo in straight sets, the steak is lowered a bit and you think; “Hmm, I still don’t think I’m going to get that steak, but it does look pretty good”. Murray then beats someone you’ve actually heard of and the steak is lowered again. It wasn’t Federer he beat, mind, but it was someone with a number beside his name.

Murray wins a couple more times and the steak is lowered again and again until it’s at a level where you can smell it, and – if you stand on your tiptoes – you can just about touch it with your fingertips. The peppercorn sauce drips down onto your face, and it drives you mad. “Yes! I’m going to get that steak this time, and oh my God, just look at it, it’s more beautiful and succulent than I could have ever imagined!” And then, just as you’re about to bathe yourself in its delicious steaky goodness, it morphs into a giant turd and falls directly into your salivating, gaping mouth.

If that’s not horrible enough, there actually was a good sports story in this country over the summer – but because it happened at the same time as the World Cup, no one cared. England smoked the Aussies in their one day series, beating them in three straight matches. You just know that next summer when the Ashes have the British viewing public all to themselves, Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood will double team Andrew Strauss’s missus the night before the First test, Shane Warne will come out of retirement six stones lighter with a new bionic arm and he’ll bowl the greatest match in the history of cricket knocking out the entire English side in the first over.

But there I’ll be, mouth agape, ready for another massive turd to be shovelled in, for by then I will be like the rest of you losers and have developed a taste for it.