Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes

 The other night, as the evening descended, I was walking home past the local Heron Foods (a bargain basement supermarket) and saw what can only be described as a brouhaha. A man wearing a black tracksuit and hat was straining, red-faced, veins practically bursting from his neck and forehead, to escape from the vice-like grip of three 50-something female shop staff who had apparently interrupted him from walking out with a bag full of stolen items. Well over a dozen customers were standing around watching this little scrum, which was taking place right in the entrance to the shop.

Saying this not to present myself as a tough guy or man of steel (well, maybe just a little bit) I immediately dived into the fray and helped to restrain the shoplifter while the staff prized the bag from his hand. This achieved, we let him go. He immediately squared up to me, declaring that he was going to knock me out. I stood my ground and said something to the effect of, “Try me” (I believe several female customers who were watching thereupon swooned) and there was a brief stand off. I thought for a moment that we were indeed going to come to blows. Then the raw emotion of the moment seemed to overcome him and he asked me, genuinely affronted, “What the fuck were you doing?”

All I could really say in response to this was, “What do you think I was doing?” But then another passer-by, a gentleman in a hi-vis jacket on a bike, came over and stood next to me and the shoplifter thought better of any attempt at fisticuffs. Announcing that I was a “prick” (he may have had a fair point; perhaps he reads my Substack), he walked off into the dusk and that was that – although I did get 9p knocked off the price of the drink I bought as a prize for my public spiritedness....<<<Read More>>>...