Before I give a specific answer to the charge of violent assault, Madam Justice, I would like to invite you to reflect with me for a moment on our definition of the term, ‘violent.’ I’m aware that my decision to defend myself in this courtroom is somewhat unorthodox, and I should like to add that this decision is not intended to reflect in any pejorative sense on the unimpeachable integrity of the Legal Aid services that have so kindly been made available to me. Perhaps I may forestall any suggestion that I am intending to waste the court’s time by explaining that, until we are in agreement as to the precise definition of the term ‘violent’, I am unable to ascertain which way I should plead the stated charge. May I also say how very elegant and attractive you are looking this morning, Madam, and express my delight and admiration that so youthful a member of your esteemed profession should have risen to such an exalted position as that which you occupy today.
So, to the charge. There is, indeed, no disputing the fact that the altercation between myself and the alleged ‘victim’ took place more or less as described on Sunday July 22nd last year at the Church of the Holy Redeemer on Finchley Road, London NW6, where I am, in fact, a parishioner. You must understand, madam, that it was one month to the day since I had witnessed the death, in traumatic circumstances, of my father and brother while on a fishing holiday on the north coast of Cornwall. The details of the accident are well documented and I should prefer not to recite them in this court, but suffice it to say that, while my father, my brother and myself were fishing off the Cornish coast close to St. Ives, there was an accident and due to harsh conditions of sea and weather, they were both drowned, despite my efforts to rescue them.
On the day of the alleged assault, I had been attending morning worship at the Church of the Holy Redeemer and was having a cup of coffee after the service, when I was confronted in an extremely offensive manner by the alleged ‘victim’. He is, was, has been for some years a down-and-out, a schizophrenic alcoholic, a drug-taker and intermittently homeless. My family and I have attempted to befriend and help him over the years; there are a large number of down-and-outs, winos, rough sleepers and so on in the area who come to the church for help. Madam, d’you mind if I drop the legal speak? I’m finding it a bit of a strain. Can I just try and describe what happened in my own words? Thank you.
This guy, his name’s David Bell, is a great, big, scary-looking, crazy, schizophrenic drunk who has violent mood swings - ha! There’s that word ‘violent’ again, you see? He enjoys scaring people, especially little old ladies in churches. He suddenly erupted in the church coffee lounge - ‘You evil bastard,’ - erm, my apologies, Madam, but that’s what he said, he was snarling at me, rolling his eyes and contorting his face like a cartoon book character, pointing his finger apocalyptically across the coffee lounge, frightening the old ladies, they were sort of scattering in all directions, and then he screamed at me ‘You murdered your father!’ And I strode up to him and whacked him twice, bang bang, across the er… left temple. He crumpled up and fell through the double doors and down the church steps. I was very careful, you understand, to hit him somewhere that would punish him swiftly and painfully, without maiming him, avoiding his teeth, or nose or eyes - a surgical strike, you might say, and coolly delivered. I could easily not have done it, it was not an uncontrolled explosion, it was a controlled explosion, a choice - ‘I will not let this pass. This man needs to be punished for what he’s said. I will not let this pass unpunished.’
The next minute he was erm...suing for peace, he was on the floor blathering, ‘I apologise, I apologise,’ and trying to squirm out of reach. I bent over him and grabbed him by the lapels to haul him off the premises. The crowd of church-goers were plucking at my arms and shouting ‘Stop it! Stop it! That’s enough!’ They seemed to think I was planning to...administer further punishment. Then he scrambled down the steps - sensible chap - and I watched him go and erm...straightening my clothes with all the well-meaning parishioners trying to soothe me, I was feeling rather...erm...embarrassed.
So there you go, Madam. I certainly did it, but this admission is no way equivalent to a plea of ‘guilty’. What’s your definition of ‘violence’? I mean, language is such a trickster - take an example from today’s news - no, I’m not digressing, Madam, you see I had a rather long wait for my hearing today, no criticism or complaint intended, you understand, but I had four or five hours to kill, sorry, unfortunate choice of phrase, erm...anyway, I had a lot of time flicking through the papers today - did you know there are at least 32 different ways to write the name Gadafy in English. Kazzafi, Gadhafi, Gheddafi, Qadhaafi - take your pick. And whatever the spelling, the name comes from a multipurpose Arabic verb meaning to fling, hurl, toss, push, shove, pelt, eject, oust, defame, slander, strafe or vomit. Language is such a trickster. The headlines are all saying, ‘The Prodigal Returns’; The fatted calf’s looking nervous, but which one is the Prodigal? Gadafy says to Blair, ‘You look good You are still young.’ Blair says, ‘It’s good to be here after all these months.’ Gadafy says, ‘You’ve done a lot of fighting. You must be exhausted.’ Mr Blair outlined his Third Way philosophy, Gadafy delved into his robe and gave him a copy of his own book, ‘The Third Universal Theory’, then he starts offering Mr Blair tips on how to run a totalitarian state. What’s your definition of violence?
In the case of the alleged ‘victim’, you could argue that I simply...passed his violence back to him - straight back. A man like David Bell is almost the...quintessence of violence - he’s absorbed it over the years, like the drip drip drip of a distillery pipette, the feckless, abusing parents, the dark deeds done in foster homes, the scoundrels on the streets, the urine on the stairs, the capricious visitations of psychosis, the drugs and booze, the insane vapourising in the mirror of a photo booth...this guy David Bell is more or less a ruined apology for a human being, a conduit for brutality and poison, one of the...turds that that we squeeze out into the backstreets and the underworld. Rather like Caliban - you know Caliban, the deformed slave in The Tempest? And like Caliban, he’d climbed back up over the rim to show us his rage and impotence, a sewer rat squirming back up the u-bend to bite our bums...and I’d given him a dose of strong thick Domestos, bang bang, kills all known germs dead, a bleach punch, bang - my knuckles ached for days afterwards - stamp, stamp, back into the ground.
Passing violence around the world, we’re all passing our violence around the world; my violence is different from your violence. My violence becomes trade, dollars, yummy things from far-off lands, petrol for my car, my central heating and electricity; your violence is ethnic cleansing and dictatorship...did you know that 85% of money never touches the ground? 85% of money is numbers on computer screens...my number’s bigger than your number, so you have to do what I tell you. Is that what they used to call usury? Passing violence round the world…
It’s easy to pass violence round the world; we’re all set up for it, phones, buttons, satellites, numbers on a screen - a word, a flicker, the gesture of a finger (like a bidder at Sotheby’s) a single word and the cluster bombs are falling, a great load released, huge shining streams of shit dropping in streamlined columns, plop plop, from the bomb doors, the bomblets dispersing, what a relief, what a relief to have made a decision, at least this way we’re actually doing something, spraying huge flying sheets of molten copper expanding, spattering across the weary, sandstone farmhouses and corrugated iron sheds and the desert scrub and twisted craters of the latest benighted toilet bowl of the civilised world...passing violence around the world...violence is so quick and straightforward, immediate and practical, at least we’re doing something, we know it’s real
I wonder what it might, I wonder if you...I mean, I wonder whether...the trouble is, we’re not set up for passing love, I’m not sure we’ve got the right systems in place, and how do you know when you’ve done it? I mean, it’s so nebulous...it’s so slow, love is so slow, I mean it’s so fucking slow, and it’s boring, yeah - most of love is boring, I’m not talking about...I mean, most of love is like changing my baby son’s nappies - shit again, you see - but most of love is the nappies, the cooing, the jigging, the wiping the chin, the blowing the nose, the singing lullabies and reading bedtime stories and holding their hand when they’re trying to get the paint on to the paper instead of all over the room and pushing them on their trike and showing them how to plant up window boxes when it’s ten times as quick to do it yourself and it’s the same at the other end of life, you know, bathing your granny with all the delicacy you’d use with a 3-day old baby and all the dignity you’d accord to an eminent professor of political theory, or shaving your great uncle and combing his hair, or slowing down your hopping anxiety to move at the same pace that your mother-in-law moves at…
And the bit in between, the vigorous, muscular, adult bit that passes for ‘real life’, that’s one of the hardest places to do love, ‘cos we want it now, we’re grown-ups now, we don’t have to wait, we know what we want, and could you just get over it, please, could you just sort yourself out, could you just either put up or shut up, ‘cos frankly I’m finding you quite September 10th, you know and life’s too short, you know? I mean, it’s pretty hard to work out where the love can grow between the cracks, in between the paving slabs, around the skirting board, up through the floor boards ‘cos the soil’s a long way down, there’s a three foot layer of concrete and we’ve laid a good sealant on top o’ that and some lovely beech decking…
I mean, a lovingly art-directed, clinically emancipated, medicalised shag is not out of the question, of course - we’ve got all the necessary creams, pills, perfumes, wax strips, precautions, devices and so on, and I’m entirely confident that your pubic hair will have been de-liced, trimmed, tooled and sculpted in an extremely pleasing fashion, and if you’d like me to place my tongue in your vulva then we could discuss that, and we’ve got a big box of tissues for afterwards and a fantastic walk-in, walk-out shower with brass taps and really good pressure, so we can talk about that, if you like, in fact, if you send me an email summarising your main erogenous zones and some bullet points for me to action, you know, overall running time, pace, positions, lighting states, background music, do you like talking while we do it, or just a modicum of artfully understated sighing and groaning, well, you know, I’m sure we can do our best to conjure up some sort of semblance of enchantment, but I would not like you to run away with the impression that this could or should at any point be mistakenly equated with what I was talking about before, you know, when I was talking about...when I was trying to explain about…
You know when I mentioned Caliban before? And Prospero says at the end, ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge to be mine own.’
So the plea is ‘guilty’, I guess.
Written and performed by Justin Butcher - Friday March 26th 2004
Copywright © 2004 Justin Butcher