I am not sure what the precise legal position is but it is an issue I have blogged before. Sometimes, I have to concede it's at least partly my fault - one day last week three people apologised for walking into me, which was nice, but three in one day makes me think I was in klutz-mode, and I was to blame.
Yesterday had not started well. Running late anyway, I could find neither my Oyster Card nor my office pass, which eventually turned up in totally the wrong place, which is senseless on a weekday. As I left the house, I wondered if I had my phone with me, and a cursory glance in my bag was fruitless, so I had to go back inside to see if it was in an obvious place - it wasn't. I used the house phone to call it and discovered it to be in the special phone pocket in my handbag.
I was fortunate that the moment I sat down on the bus on Brixton Hill the rain began to lash down. And I mean lash - poor visibility, the works. And yet when I alighted at Brixton for the Tube, it had stopped!
As I walked from platform to escalators at Vauxhall a man ran into me. He was running - not trotting, not jogging, not that sort of awkward walk-run hybrid that people like me do, but running. Fast. Straight into me. Banging against my left shoulder and chest area, bouncing off and continuing his frantic headlong pelt to the Victoria Line. Note, Victoria Line , the line that runs at intervals of a minute or two, and seldom more than five, in the daytime.
I was shocked, winded, thrown off balance, and about five people gave me looks of "WTF was that about?" I got to the escalator and realised that my shoulder, upper arm and chest hurt. And I was shaking. And suddenly I burst into tears and thought "I've been assaulted." I'll grant that it was not the man's deliberate intention directly to maim, but, surely, there comes a point that one's behaviour is so reckless that a reasonable person would conclude there was a high probability of it leading to injury. If one is so arrogantly and ignorantly self-centred so as to not understand, or not care about, the consequences of one's action it must amount to intent, at least in common sense. Whether that would stand up in court is another matter.
In tears and shaking, I approached the LUL chap in charge of opening the Assistance Gate and said what had happened. He led me into the control room and sat me down, and got me a cup of water. Another LUL chap asked if I needed to go to hospital. I would say full marks to Tom and the other chap for being sweet and supportive and understanding.
It was still hurting when I got to work and got into the daily farce of furniture removing (more of, later), which was impossible to do with one arm, so when I dropped a monitor crash bang I burst into tears again.
Eventually, the arm stopped hurting, and the shock and indignity wore off, and I concluded that it was a minor incident. I am adamant that it was not an accident; if the circumstances had led to a death (far-fetched but for the sake of argument), the victim's family could reasonably press for manslaughter.
But another important lesson I learnt was that - in the initial moments and hours after something unpleasant happens to someone, their reaction is not proportional to the severity of the incident. More than a day later, I am able to conclude that it was of minor consequence, but when shocked and upset, reactions are not logical. They can be a product of a culmination of other things, too - sometimes when I drop or walk into something, I laugh at my own expense; sometimes I curse; and other times I conclude that everything's going wrong. And for anybody who's dealing with someone in such circumstances, it is wise to pay no heed to the objective facts. So, thanks to Yim who was sweet and supportive and told me to sit down, have a coffee, and suggested that I went home, or called Jimmy.
