Show No Fear: A Bouncer's Diary by Bill Carson Page A

vision was starting to grey out, in a matter of seconds I’ll be going down and out to the floor. I manage to force my hand up the inside part of his elbow and grab the sleeve of his jacket and manage to swing him around in front of me where I deliver a hard jolting left upper cut to his jaw. It was an excellent punch; you know when you have delivered one just right. It had to be if I hadn’t landed that punch I would have gone down. I grab him by the hair and give him two more short sharp well-aimed left hooks/uppercuts to his chin. As I let go of his hair he falls to the floor unconscious where he gets the order of the boot. Actually I think the first punch had knocked him out and it was only by me holding him that was keeping him upright. One of the other lads is involved now and drags the fella out. I didn’t have a clue what else had been happening but as I started to regain some form of normality I hear some very loud hysterical screaming. It was coming from one of the young barmaids; she was looking down at the floor where a crowd was now gathering. I look over and see the guy who Simon was scuffling with earlier lying flat on his back. He was unconscious with blood covering virtually the whole of his face. I get a bit closer; and as I knelt down beside him I could hear that his breathing was very shallow, the music went off and the lights came on illuminating his face, which presented a horrible spectacle. His face was a red mask. With his lips turning blue I had to do something quickly? The blood from his injuries had run down into his throat which was slowly choking him to death, I remembered some basic first aid and checked the A B C, airway breathing and circulation. I tried to turn him on his side into the recovery position checking that he had not swallowed his tongue. I took hold of his head but it was so slippery with all the blood that I lost my grip and it slipped out of my hands and banged into the hard wooden floor with a sickening thud. I managed to get him into the recovery position and I turn him on his side. That seemed to do the trick; and all of the blood that was restricting his breathing was vomited out. Thankfully his breathing started to return to normal but he was still unconscious though. Police and Ambulance arrive and he is taken away.
I asked the lads what had happened, apparently Simon knocked the guy to the ground and then gave him a dozen or so unreturned viscious blows to the face while he was out cold, how stupid was that? He could have died, and for what? We would have all been implicated.
I went into the gent’s toilet to wash the blood off of my gloves and watched the water from the tap turning red as it spiraled its way down into the waste pipe; a few minutes ago it had been quite happily pumping around inside someone’s veins. That’s when I decided this was my last weekend on the door. A punch up is one thing; this was out of order as far as I was concerned. I went back into the bar, the blood had been mopped up, the D J had started up again and the lights had been dimmed. People were drinking, dancing and enjoying themselves within a few minutes as if nothing had happened. I went back the next night and that was that. I had spoken to Pete earlier on the next day and told him that it was going to be my last night at the club, he came down later on that evening and at closing time we had our last nostalgic drink at the place.
The club closed down two months after my departure.
    And so my journey into this strange and hazardous occupation has come to an end. What conclusions did I draw from the experience? I can’t say I’m proud of anything except maybe the way I handled my fears and the way that I stood up to certain individuals. All I can say is that I genuinely tried to keep the decent people safe from the drug dealer’s drunk’s bullies and scumbags. We took all the crap so the genuine punter didn’t have to and that’s what the job is all about. At one point I did