Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #markfield
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As you can probably tell from my timeline the #MarkField incident has really bothered me, for lots of reasons, but one of them is about being grabbed by the neck. Here's a thread about how it feels when it happens, which you may want to avoid if it's liable to distress you.
My twenties started well, I finished a degree I never believed I'd do, I bought my first home with my fiance, I was studying for a PhD. I hoped to finish that soon and start a family before I was 25. But my fiance ended our relationship, I got sick and Iost my pets and home.
I moved to Birmingham to continue my PhD. I often worked late and generally had no problems getting home by walking and using the bus. One evening I was on the top deck of the bus right at the front, looking out at the city. As we set off there was a knock on the window.
Short thread: true story. A few years ago, I was doing a talk in a cathedral. My interviewer, a community liaison officer, was a young Muslim woman in a hijab. Ten minutes into the event, a man turned up: drunk, and angry about what he felt was a misuse of the space.
He was a big guy, a bit rough-looking, and he was starting to be properly disruptive. No-one in the crowd intervened. There was no security. He wasn't wearing an evening dress, so I guess he could have been armed.
I was about to respond, when my interviewer said to me quietly: "Keep going, I've got this." She left me to talk to the audience and went to the back to talk quietly to the man, who eventually followed her into a side room. The event went on as planned.
