I nearly got into fisticuffs this weekend. Sort of.

At the Blue Angel on Tongren Lu (a classy sort of establishment where if you dose off after a few ports, the valet will leave a crisply ironed copy of The Telegraph on your lap) I was enjoying a Raspberryade with my visiting chum.

Whilst Jose was enaged in a game of dice with a friendly young lady, I was watching the band do an awful cover version of “Livin La Vida Local”.
This young chap comes up to me, and through a mixure of spittle-flecked Chinese and hand gestures, indicates that he wants to play the game “Rock, Scissors, Paper”.

Well I don’t know if you’re aware of the rules of that, but basically the first one is that you have to be sober enough to see your own hands in order to play. This guy wasn’t.

I beat him a couple of times at that, when he decided it wasn’t the game for him and stumbled off to aggressively hug his friends a few more times.


Back he comes, this time to try his luck at an arm wrestle. Now I’m no David Hasselhof, but for some reason I always do OK at arm wrestling, and despite the fact this guy was dressed up like a rent-boy Bruce Lee, I beat him pretty easily.

Next thing you know he’s back with two tumblers full of iced beer which, I realised after he started drinking his, I was supposed to try and drink more quickly than him.

After draining his glass all down his black vest, he was all up in my grill shouting

“F** YOU!”

in capital letters- only he didn’t use asterixes, I can tell you.

“Now seems like a good time to leave mate”

I says to Jose, which was a shame as he’d just worked out the point of the dice game (you always lose and have to buy the girl a drink).

We went home shortly(ish) afterwards.