Tommy was having a bad day. His boss had sent him to work on a house in Cheadle where they were building an extension. It was in a tree-lined street of large, detached properties, which were in contrast to Tommy’s modest council house in Gorton. As soon as Tommy arrived, the householder made it clear that she resented his presence.
‘Go round the back,’ she instructed, when she answered the door. Then, eying him from head to toe with a look of unconcealed contempt across her face, she added, ‘I won’t have you traipsing your muck all over my nice clean carpets.’
She opened the side gate of her substantial property and directed Tommy to the area at the back where the extension was being built. Then she left him to it after issuing strict instructions that he wasn’t to enter the rest of the house under any circumstances. The stuck-up bitch! She hadn’t even offered him a cuppa.
Throughout the day he noticed her hovering close to the kitchen window as she watched him working. Every so often she would come to the back door to complain about something she wasn’t happy with. He could still hear her shrill, nagging voice echoing in his ears, ‘Don’t put that there!’ ‘I hope you haven’t damaged the azaleas.’ ‘Keep the noise levels down!’
She even refused to let him use her toilet and told him to go elsewhere. So he went to the pub at dinner, sank a couple of pints and used the toilet there. When he arrived back at the house, she came to the back door to speak to him.
‘Where do you think you’ve been till this time?’ she asked.
‘Having my dinner,’ he grumbled. ‘Why, what’s wrong?’
‘You’ve been gone almost two hours! Does your manager mind you taking so long for your lunch break?’
‘As long as the job gets done, what’s the problem?’ he asked, annoyed at having to kowtow to a woman.
‘We’ll see about that. I shall be keeping a close eye on you to make sure the work does get done! And I want it completed to my satisfaction, otherwise there will be repercussions.’
Snobby cow! If it wasn’t for the fact that he needed the work, he would have told her where to shove her extension. And to make matters worse, he had to go there again tomorrow, and every day after that until the job was finished. He couldn’t ask to be put on another job either. He was lucky to have this one after he had upset his boss a few weeks previously.
Taking flak from people like Mrs Heston, and not being able to retaliate, didn’t suit Tommy at all. As he worked in silence, his resentment grew. To add to his woes, the two pints he’d drunk at dinner had worked their way through to his bladder and he was bursting to have another piss.
When Mrs Heston declared in a self-important manner that she was nipping out to do some errands, Tommy saw it as an opportunity to exact some revenge. He waited till she was well away from the house. Then he unzipped his flies and pointed his penis towards her herbaceous border, sending a spray of urine all over one of Mrs Heston’s precious azalea bushes. He’d have a go at the heather tomorrow.
Despite this act of defiance, he was still annoyed when he stepped off the bus on Hyde Road, so he decided to stop off at his local. A couple of beers before tea should help, he thought.
The dusty cement had given him a thirst and it wasn’t long before he’d sunk a few pints. He was sitting with two of his cronies, who listened patiently while he let off steam about the shit job he’d been given. They even bought him a couple of drinks to cheer him up. But Tommy Robinson always stood his round. So he got up and made his way over to the bar to return the favour.
‘Three pints of bitter, Rosie, and one for yourself,’ he said to the barmaid.
When she served him, he grabbed hold of the three pint glasses with his large, calloused hands, wedging the third pint between the other two to hold it in place and gripping it with his fingertips. Men like Tommy didn’t take two trips to the bar to collect one round of drinks. He could comfortably manage three pints at once.
Well he could when he hadn’t already drunk a few. He swung around, eager to return to his friends and get started on his beer, but before he could complete the turn, his arm connected with another customer, and one of the pints slipped from his grasp. It crashed to the ground, showering the grimy pub carpet with fragments of glass. The spilt beer soaked through Tommy’s work boots and jeans as well as those of the other man.
Tommy slammed the remaining two pints back down on the bar and swivelled to face the man. ‘You clumsy bastard!’ he shouted as he jabbed the man sharply in his shoulder, ‘Why don’t you watch what you’re fuckin’ doing?’
The man had a reputation to rival Tommy’s and he immediately retaliated, landing a punch squarely on Tommy’s chin. Tommy didn’t have chance to hit back. Customers dashed between them to stop a full-on fight.
‘Turn it in or you’ll be out the door!’ shouted the landlord.
For several seconds, both men tried to reach beyond the customers who were holding them back. When Tommy’s adversary realised it was a waste of time, he gave up and stepped back.
But Tommy wasn’t so easily pacified.
Unable to reach the other man, he aimed blows at anybody who tried to hold him back. ‘Let me at the bastard!’ he yelled.
‘I’m warning you, Tommy! Turn it in or you’re out on your arse,’ shouted the landlord.
Tommy’s drinking buddies tried to calm him down but Tommy was past caring. All the frustrations of his day spilled out of him in a stream of profanity and wanton punches.
‘Right, that’s it. Get him out!’ ordered the landlord.
Tommy took one last swipe at the two pints of beer that stood on the bar. The glasses flew past the landlord before striking the back of the bar area then ricocheting and finally shattering on the ground, drenching the landlord with beer and spraying him with broken glass.
‘I’ll fuckin’ have you!’ shouted Tommy as several men hauled him through the crowded pub. He glared at the customers who sank their heads into their pints, aware of Tommy’s reputation as a fighter. ‘If anyone else wants a go, just step outside and I’ll sort the fuckin’ lot of you!’
Tommy landed outside on the pavement and heard the bolt sliding across the pub door. He kicked the door in frustration before spending a few minutes hurling abuse at all those inside. Eventually, he gave up and went home.
*
While Tommy was causing upset in his local pub, his son was also letting his temper get the better of him. All through tea he thought about what had happened earlier. Anthony Hampson was in the wrong and he knew it. But he was also the owner of a leather Casey football, which put the balance of power in his favour.
Peter was sick of Anthony getting all his own way just because he had a Casey. If he had one of his own then things would have been different but, despite pleading with his mother to buy him one, he always received the same answer: ‘We can’t afford it.’
As Peter thought about the injustice of it all, he became increasingly angry. Finally, determined to confront Anthony Hampson and have things out with him, Peter sneaked out of the house.
He couldn’t see anybody outside at first so he walked to the top of the street to have a look around. Once there he scoured the adjacent street, looking to the left and right. Nothing. So he decided to venture further. He crossed the road and made his way towards the pathway which ran down the back of Anthony’s home.
When Peter reached the top of the path, he saw Anthony up ahead. He began to approach him, but Anthony walked further away, towards his back garden. Peter continued in Anthony’s direction. Then Anthony spotted him and increased his speed, so Peter speeded up too, determined to catch up with him before he reached his home.
When they were a few metres away from Anthony’s back garden, Peter finally caught up with him, grabbing the back of his coat and forcing Anthony to turn around.
‘Gotcha, you dirty cheat!’ announced Peter in triumph as he saw the look of fear on Anthony’s face.
‘Get off me!’ shouted Anthony.
‘No, I won’t. You’re a dirty cheat, and I don’t like cheats. Now you’re gonna pay for it.’
While clutching Anthony’s coat to stop him running away, Peter gave him a sharp kick in the shins. He was set to continue. But, unknown to Peter, Anthony had been playing in his back garden with two of his friends. On hearing the commotion, the two friends ran out of the garden and jumped to Anthony’s defence, punching and kicking at Peter. Although Peter was two years older than them, he was outnumbered. Within seconds they had him on the ground and had surrounded him, ready to take revenge.