I just do not understand blokes. Last night in the pub, I was having a nice quiet chat with Mrs. Toad and Alex Cornish, and this chap who was sitting at the bar turned around and started swearing at her. More to the point, given Mrs. Toad was bemoaning her recently-disclosed Irish ancestry, he started swearing at her. After a bit I inevitably did the protective male thing and told him to shut the fuck up and not to speak to her like that again, that we were sorry if we offended him, hadn’t intended to do so and apologised if we had, but that he was out of line and should shut his trap. Firm and to the point, with a little bit of macho bluster, I think you’d describe it.

Anyway, he continued to scowl at us and on two more occasions tried to spark something off again, although with me this time. It was all very typical ‘Do you want to take this outside’ versus ‘No, not really, but if you’re really feeling confident come over here and have a go and stop fucking talking about it’ sort of stuff. It was infantile, but what the fuck do you do in such situations, back down and apologise?

Anyway, after the latest bout of ‘my dad could take your dad’ bollocks he buggered off to the toilet and then, when he came back, made a not entirely unfriendly comment about the fact that Mrs. Toad had The Sun open on the bar next to her. From this, he sort of started talking to us and quickly became incredibly friendly. I don’t think Alex or Mrs. Toad were all that keen on fisticuffs to begin with, and I certainly had no real desire for a punch-up so we pretty much reciprocated and ended up talking to the guy for a couple of hours.

He was a decent enough bloke, under all the nonsense. An English teacher with a real passion for literature, particularly American, and particularly their simple, economical novellas. I thought he was going to hug me when I asked if he liked Paul Auster. By the end of the evening when he went home because he had to be up early for school it was as if we were all the best of friends.

Fucking bizarre. And the weird thing is that this sort of thing has happened to me on numerous occasions – picking fights with opposing players on the football pitch, nose to nose shouting matches with kitchen porters in the Glasgow Hilton who just got out of fucking Barlinnie earlier that afternoon, pissing contests with alpha male cool types during my uni years – it seems to be an established way for blokes to make friends. As Mrs. Toad said, had that happened between two women there would have been a long and simmering grudge that both of them would have happily waited years to settle. With blokes, if I see that bloke the next time I’m in the same pub, I guess we’ll share a few pints as if nothing ever happened.

What the fuck is going on there? Attempted bullying? PIssing contest? Emotional retardation trying to reach out and make friends, just going about it in a strange way? I fucking do not understand male bonding, I really don’t.

Alex Cornish – Scotland the Brave
Art Brut – Fight!