On the Doors by Stellakis Stylianou

Author:Stellakis Stylianou [Stellakis Stylianou]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781857829938
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2013-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

But my gambling in those days wasn’t just confined to the dog track. If there was any money left, not needed for the home, I’d have a bet. Cards, dogs and the horses were me favourites, but I’d often go down Stanley’s Casino in Margate and have a roll. I loved it there, ’cos even if you never won, they’d always give you steak and chips – so you got summat to eat.

And a fella named Theo Michaels, used to run this trendy wine bar underneath the casino. He was havin’ trouble with the local authority licensing at the time and he would keep a book and write your name in it, plus the fact you were gonna eat. Then he could serve you drinks at the bar. But this one night, I was down there with my mate, Greek Tony, and another pal called Mick Peters who was a Gumbarro, one of the best men at my wedding, and we didn’t wanna eat but wanted a drink. He said there was a bit of a problem that night and we couldn’t drink. So we decided to leave, but just as we were goin’, he served some other people, quite a few of ’em.

‘Oi,’ I said. ‘How comes they can get a drink and we can’t?’

‘I wouldn’t serve you even if you were my own brother,’ shouted Michaels, really angry, for no apparent reason. It was embarrassin’.

It was particularly embarrassing because Mick Peters was my Gumbarro. He had signed the ribbon at my wedding and paid money for the privilege of being my Gumbarro for life. You must never upset your Gumbarro, and whatever he says is right. You must never argue with him or shout at him or be disrespectful to him. You are closer than friends, closer than mates. So to be disrespected in front of Mick was very bad indeed.

So I said to Michaels, ‘Right, we’ll come back another time when you’ve calmed down, mate.’ But when he shouted again, I thought, I’m not having this. So I told him to fuck it, if he wanted to shout at me, I could shout louder. Then we decided to leave, walked out and went up to the casino.

Then this Michaels bloke came running out of the wine bar and he was shouting again, ‘Who are you givin’ it the big ’un in my bar in front of all my staff?’

So I looked at him and thought, What the fuck are you on about? He had embarrassed me. So I stepped down two steps and went bang! – I hit him, but he dodged it. That’s when my mate whispered to me that he was the British and European Tae Kwon Do champion. I threw another left, and he dodged that. We were standing close together and all of a sudden he aimed a kick to the side of me head. So I put me hand up and blocked it. The pain made me scream out. He had caught my finger and broken it.

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