A belting time

Luckily, down at The Shakespeare, any such antics are a rare occurrence and the culprits are given short shrift should they choose to chance their arm. Other danger signs to look out for are: the casual tossing of beer mats (normally a means of testing the waiter/owner's patience), innocent horseplay (that can soon escalate) and, of course, anybody removing any item of clothing at any time.

Imagine my nervousness, then, when a few days ago when I spied a chap in the corner taking his belt off. I legged it over sharpish.

"Er, excuse me, but what on earth's going on?"

"It's a bet."

"Eh?" The man in question pointed gingerly to one of his friends.

"He lost the bet and so now I'm going to hit him with my belt."

"Well, not in here, you're not."

"Why? Why not?"

Resisting the urge to point out that principally it was because he was thirty years old, not three, I instead offered the eminently reasonable argument that on a list of spectacles that may, at any given point, be of interest to our other customers, a grown man hitting another grown man with his belt would be fairly low down in the pecking order. The would-be assailant grunted something about our pub being no fun at all before trudging out into the late evening sunshine, shoulders bowed, belt in hand, trousers in imminent danger of falling down around his ankles.

As I say, these incidents are few and far between at our pub and we're extraordinarily lucky to have the customer profile that we do. However, on the busier side of Malaga city centre, the neighbours are expressing increasing concern at the continued rise of anti-social behaviour around town. Only this week, things reached a new low - literally - when one group of friends decided it would be a rollicking good wheeze to throw a member of their gang down a subterranean refuse chute. The ensuing debacle involved police attendance and a thirty-minute rescue operation. Let's face it, it's not exactly the most efficient use of taxpayers' money available.

What to do? Well, given that there are companies in Malaga whose business model is based solely on organising stag and hen parties, it seems that the unruly conduct is here to stay and, as the council is discovering, it's really difficult to deal with this stuff through legislation alone.

I don't know, it's only an idea but maybe we should just let nature take its course until the culprits all eventually wind up dwelling in underground rubbish containers, beating each other to within an inch of their lives with their belts. I think it's called natural selection or something.