As I was going to bed last night I heard a raucous rendition of “Happy Birthday” from across the road from my window, and my heart sank. I knew I was in for a sleepless night. And so it proved. Two hours later, and I was woken up by screams and the unmistakeable sound of punches, and the party had spilled out on to the street. Two big women in their twenties were hitting each other, and the rest had drawn back to watch, egging them on. They squared off like boxers for a while, squealing at each other, and then lurched in for the bodyhold. Everyone had such vast amounts of alcohol taken that I doubt many of them could see clearly; certainly few could stand without swaying. The two women careered across the street, in a slow-mo waltz, locked in a tight grip. One of them had such a high pitched voice it was like a jagged knife, repeatedly calling out “ya whore, ya” for what seemed like hours, like a talking doll. They ended up flailing around on the street, the crowd of about a dozen partygoers standing around.

The curious thing about real fights, as opposed to the staged nonsense that we see in films, is that they are never fluid or athletic. Two lumps of flesh are intertwined, locked in a tense grip, and move as little as possible, for fear of giving away advantage. There’s a flash of opportunity grabbed in an instant, another stab at a scratch or a punch or a dig, and then the movement freezes again for another tense eon. Time seems flaccid, disjointed, yet highly volatile. Unlike cinematic fights, which are cathartic and are about the release of tension, real street fights are nauseating affairs, squalid and seemingly endless; the tension while waiting for something to happen, anticipating/dreading a head smashed against concrete, or a headbutt, is unbearable.
The melee continued for an hour. In the end I had to get up and watch properly from my living room, it was impossible to sleep. All down my street I could see my neighbours doing the same. The group split among the supporters of the women, and then the lads started joining in the fights; the same stilted confused grappling, shouting, roaring. If ever there was a public service announcement on the insane effects of alcohol, it was broadcast on my street last night for all to see and hear.
A few months ago, something similar happened at that house, but with an extra element that horrified me. Then, there was the same chaotic mill. What was being fought over was not a man, as last night, but custody of two toddler children, twins, and, shockingly, they were literally being yanked from the arms of adults in the street, and, at one stage, the woman holding one of them was pushed to the ground, the hysterical child practically vomiting with terror. It was at that stage that I rang the guards. The response I got was jaded; yes, they’d already heard about the incident. He kept on cutting me off when I was saying there were children involved... he didn’t want to know anything more. Disturbingly, no guards came. After the longest time, the twins were bundled into a car and the drunk driver lurched off with tyres screeching.
The worst thing is that the twins still live in that house, and I hear their cries all the time, day and night. Even as I write this, one of them is bawling. Last night, in pauses between the shouting matches in the street, their cries could be heard from their bedroom, a continuous lament of fear and unmet needs for comfort. Mercifully they weren’t the centre of the violence last night, but this time the guards decided they would show up, all six cars of them. Their attitude was aggressive, but then in the face of such blind drunkenness, with unmitigated rage being directed at them, I could see their point. The woman with the screeching voice was pushing one guard repeatedly; he was asking her to leave the house, where her opponent was cowering, jeering her. After one heavy push from her, he pushed her back - she fell back on the ground. Whatever decibels she had been emitting for the past hour were nothing to what erupted from her now - she took out her phone screeching “I’m calling the guards, you pushed me, I’m a woman!” and despite the guard saying calmly, incredulously, “We are the guards” she stood there swaying, her blotched stupid face illuminated by the blue light of her mobile, waiting for someone to answer her. Then she gave up, and made a lurch for her taunting opponent again, pushing past the guard; she was then pounced on by a number of his colleagues. By this time, there were about 16 of them, in six cars. All attempts to get the party guests to go home were resisted; the guards became abusive, “fuck off to the northside then”. “Who the fuck do you think you are saying ‘fuck off to the northside?’” came the response. His friend piped up, helpfully, “Well you do live on the northside.”
A real nasty sodden stalemate prevailed, pushing and shoving, pointless arguing, no one calming down, no one interested in backing down. With no one moving, no resolution, and the party guests refusing to be quiet or to stop pushing and screaming at the guards, the conclusion was inevitable. About six were arrested, and it took a good 20 minutes to get each of them handcuffed and into the cars, with their friends or husbands interfering and shouting abuse.
As the last car zoomed off, a couple of people were left sitting morosely on the curb. Bins had been overturned, beer cans were everywhere. And as silence crept back to the street, the sound of the wailing twins drifted through the cold night air.
If one needs to know how people get to behave like that, that plaintive haunting sound is where it all begins. I imagine each one of the party guests milling around on the street last night had grown up uttering that sound; fear and brutality and neglect their first lessons in life. How families like that will ever stop abusing their children like that is, at the moment of writing, beyond me.