Balaclavas

I’m writing an entire blog about balaclavas (and ninja weapons), I just want to point out that this is not a bizarre fetish, and I am not some night crawling sex attacker or burglar. There is a story and a meaning here.

When I was a young lad growing up in Streatham, like all the other kids, I had a “cache” of weapons under my bed, ninja stars, tonfa, nunchucks, air pistols, cricket bat (with a nail through it) and best of all, my nuke, a full on Rambo knife with sewing thread in case I ripped my arm open falling of my Raleigh boxer. It also had a compass; I’ve never needed or used a compass in my life.

Sounds a bit odd, but we weren’t little fuckers like today’s heavily armed children, we just used to play “innocent” war games over the common, knifes between our teeth, making bamboo pit traps and building P.O.W camps out of logs, water boarding each other and making IED’s out of fireworks using dog shit for shrapnel, innocent Saturday fun fuelled by wham bars, dip dabs and monster munch, the child equivalent of mainlining heroin.

None of this was helped by the fact that Streatham had two armouries, a choice of places to go to stock up on all manner of weapons from around the world, with men who would happily take childrens pocket money in exchange for crude killing/maiming devices. We would hang around, while blokes tried out shotguns on a live firing range. Not like the little fuckers of today, walking around like they have osteoporosis of one hip, scanning back and forth for people who could potentially be disrespecting them, then quickly stuffing them like a pig with a horrid dagger and then running off in custom Nikes designed to give maximum speed from a new murder scene. Arseholes.

In my cache was an olive green balaclava, a lovely bit of knitwear lovingly designed to keep my large then beardless face warm, leaving only my talking lips exposed and my seeing eyes clear, brilliant, what a superb practical winter idea, I expect originally knitted by a Nanna long before rape and terrorism were invented.

I found it in a box when I was about 17 and sitting around my mums with my waster mates drinking and fucking around on SNES, megadrive etc, it was the middle of winter. I decided that I needed more beer, but the prospect of walking the ¾ miles to the Off Licence was too much and I thought fuck it, I’m going to see if I can walk all the way to shop, and get served in my olive drab coloured balaclava. My mates were wagering with me that the Police would intervene, I doubted this, no, I thought, they would surely know how cold it was and realise that any poor soul out in it unprotected would have a bitingly cold face, and drive on. I left in earnest.

I’d got about 150 meters, not even to the end of my mums road and a Police car pulled over, I saw then, but didn’t think anything of it. “Oy, you” – I turned around and replied to them cordially. “What do you think you are doing?” they said, changing the tone slightly. “I’m going to the off license to buy some beer, I’m going back home and play computer games with my mates” I replied in an honest, but ultimately matter of fact way pointing in the direction of the shop, and then back home. “What are you doing with THAT on” They quizzed, with, in my opinion, an absolute bamboozling lack of common sense, given that it was about minus 2 degrees. “I’m just keeping my face warm” I replied, in an informative tone, telling them about my cold face. “Don’t be stupid mate, take it off” they hissed, in a fucking draconian Naziesque manner. “But what about my cold face” I protested, pointing at the sky, trying to pin point the source of the cold, then gesturing back to my huge wool blend covered face. “Take it off, or I’m going to nick you” they cunted back at me from their mouths, taking the right piss out of my democratic rights (which, correct me if I’m wrong, include the right to keep my face warm?. “Yeah, but what abo..” I realised that if I mentioned my cold face one more time, I would be in the back of the squad car, and my mates would be back at my place, probably finding my stash of mint condition porn. I ripped it off my head and uttered “fuck sake” and they got back in the car and drove off. I was livid, not everyone in an army shade of green 3 holed balaclava is an IRA terrorist, rapist or burglar, I was using it for the reason it was intended, to shield my fucking frequently mentioned cold face.

This has always narked me since then, and I’ve decided to bury this demon, to dispel this chink in the armour of my democratic rights and PROVE once and for all, that a balaclava, is a practical garment which has a real use in this biting cold weather. [How you going to do that Dick?] – Well, I like a pub crawl, I love London, I find balaclavas practical, so I’m going to combine the three. I’m going to see just how friendly London is to a group of people in different balaclavas, and record the results. [Fucking hell Dick, you are 36, this smacks of a mid-life crisis, and attention seeking desperate act from a very single hopeless man crying out for someone, any cunt, to pay him some mind, even if it is just helping him to fill up the form on the public order offence that’s just been committed] – Well, you are sort of right, but the main point is, to show how ridiculous some laws/views are, and my right to not bear my large cold face to the world in winter, and to show how widely we are afflicted by ignorance and paranoia (without turning it into a forum to get into the “Well, how comes she can wear that Burkha” and stuff like that, because I genuinely don’t give a fuck spit about all of that).

I’d like you to be there when I do this, if you are, I also just want you to be aware that you might get shot several times in the face by excitable Police officers from the elite firearms division of SO19, you know the ones, they shot that Brazilian guy 14 times at Stockwell because he was running for a train because he was late for work, and they shot that pissed Barrister bloke in Chelsea about 40 times because he was drunk and missing his ex (and waving a shot gun out of the window).

You can go as far into it as you want and protest the stupidity of some of the places that will refuse to serve you. I’m personally going to try and get a police officer to commit to promising that I can leave if I take it off, and then watch his face when I reveal an auxiliary one underneath. Or you could draw one on, I don’t know, use your imagination. You will though, experience alienation from society, and will know, briefly what it feels like to be a leper, or a male with really ginger hair.

Anyway, this is not to waste police time, I wouldn’t dream of doing that, I know how busy they are defending our country against erm bad drivers, litter louts, and errant dog owners with their anally anarchic dogs shitting hither and tither (?)**

It’s heartening to see that Amazon.co.uk has 4 pages of balaclavas, starting from £2, you could also, if you wanted to look less conspicuous, wear a leather gimp mask, remembering to unzip the mouth piece when you speak, even if it’s just to say OW, when you are cracked over the head by a truncheon.

(This is actually me at about 12 with THAT balaclava on, the gun isn’t real…)