THE REASONS
To be honest I’ve never worried about getting assaulted as I’m the kind of guy that stays out of trouble. Sure, in my testosterone-fuelled youth I got into the odd scrape – which normally involved me attempting an ill-advised headbutt before being thrown out of a club – but those days are in the past. However, when four thugs decided to change this nonchalant attitude when they temporarily rearranged my face, it seemed a good idea to share their emphatic viewpoint with the wider world – you’ll be pleased to note that I’ve decided to let words do the talking for me and not my fists.

THE EXPERIENCE
It had been a good night out; pints had been drunk, new friends made and I like to believe the shapes I ended up throwing in Audio were of my normal unique standard. Feeling a touch sleepy I left the club bout 2.15am and headed back towards my bachelor pad on Elm Grove. I decided to take my usual route home, cutting across back through Hanover and along Ashton Rise. But this wander home was not to conclude in its normal way with me tucked up snoring in bed having devoured half a loaf of bread. The following is what my patched-up memory tells me.

I remember a voice from the flats above yelling, I don’t know if it was at me. Four people ran up behind me, on hearing them I began to turn and caught a glimpse of one of them. This snapshot was followed by a blur of an arm before something hit me hard on my left temple, knocking me to the floor. I immediately pulled myself into a foetal position, saw some white shoes moving and then I was unconscious.

My next groggy memory is of being cradled in the arms of a woman whose name I do not know and face I sadly cannot remember. My Good Samaritan had been brave enough to look after an unconscious person covered in blood and I am thankful. I really hope her clothes did not have to be dry-cleaned.

The emergency services soon arrived and they carted me off to A&E. They discovered that the copious amounts of blood were coming from a leak in my head which needed five stitches. After the nurse had finished she popped her head round the curtain to ask a doctor to check if she’d “done it right.” This was not the most reassuring phrase to hear in a hospital.

The rest of my night was spent in A&E where I cried like I’ve done before. In between this I was running back and forth to the loo, not to go to the toilet but because it had a mirror. I was determined that somehow I would write a story from this mess and that I would therefore need photos. During the early hours of the morning I also gave a fairly useless statement to the police (see end of article), had an x-ray and agreed with one of the other patients that if he had been with me we would have indeed “decked those arseholes.”

I decided to go home and get looked after by my parents whilst I recovered. On the way to the station a woman looked at me and then said to her little daughter: “Don’t look at the nasty thug.” Tired of the looks I had been getting and seeing whispers behind cupped hands, I turned and, putting on my poshest accent, said: “Excuse me ma’am but I am not a thug, just someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She apologised, but it does prove the old adage true about how appearances can be deceiving.

Three weeks after the incident I was virtually back to normal. My main annoyances during the healing process came from being unable to shave, due to a swollen face, and not being able to rinse my hair thanks to the sutures. Both are essential for me to feel human. Also being unable to see clearly does tend to be a hindrance. However I’m thanking my lucky stars that there is no permanent damage. In fact I did not even have a hangover the next day, though I would advise going for a bacon sarnie instead.

WAS IT WORTH IT?
All night long I was shocked to be in tears. It seems like a natural reaction but I should explain a bit about myself; I’m a country bumpkin who has had more scrapes, cuts, bumps, bruises and bashes than I can remember. It’s a normal state of affairs for me to be injured in some way. However, I never cry (apart from at the end of Cool Runnings, Armageddon and The Secret Millionaire). But I was so shaken up by this I could not stop shaking and sobbing. I wasn’t terrified that it was going to happen again, nor that I was going to be permanently injured, but that it had happened full stop. That it had happened, not to someone else, but to me, the quintessential average Joe.

The one word that has been spinning round in my head is WHY? I’ve gone over and over that night in my head and I had no problems in the club, nor was I in a bad mood. I’m not the kind of person who starts fights and I don’t go around randomly abusing people. They were not mugging me as I still had my phone and wallet. In fact I would genuinely rather they had been stolen so I could make some sense of the whole mess. Perhaps they thought I was someone else; dark hair, 5’10, slim build with jeans on, I could have looked like anyone. Or perhaps I yelled something back at the voice from the flats, but then what could I have said to have deserved being assaulted? I don’t know and I doubt I ever will.

So what have I learned then? At first I was fixated on the fact that the people who live in newspapers and on the TV do actually exist in real life. But I’m an optimist and I decided to focus on the fact that yes, there are some people like that, but also there are people who will go out of their way to help you out, like my Samaritan. And lastly, always stick to the busiest and most well lit streets. It’s better to spend 10 minutes walking than lose a week of your life with a bust up face, a woolly head and feeling completely and utterly emasculated.

It’s now two months after the assault and I am physically fixed. The police could not find any CCTV of the incident as there were no cameras in the area and the witness appeal came to nothing. Therefore there is nothing more that they can do, and the people that did this are still living here in Brighton. So if you ever see someone who looks like “the bloke who nearly scored for Crawley against United” then be careful, he might be looking for some more fun.

Words and photos by Ben Scott
Ilustrations Emilie Jean Maria Lashmar