It is a strange symptom of ageing that you develop a marvellous and totally misguided confidence in your own abilities. The middle-aged action hero genre really doesn’t help
What with the shortage of abattoir workers posing an existential threat to the pig industry, and the dearth of HGV drivers a threat to the supply of everything, the critical bouncer shortage seems less terrifying, as it won’t leave us hungry. One in five nightclubs can’t get the staff, and it got Mr Z thinking, with his characteristic foresight, about the ramifications. Maybe some stag-night parties would be able to get in en masse, still dressed as Vikings, for instance. And once you’re allowed into a club dressed as a Viking, what is to stop you leaping over the bar and downing vodka as if it’s mead? This was when he made the surprise announcement: he’d make a really good bouncer. It’s because he’s so polite, and, according to him, any situation can be defused with elaborate courtesy; manners are like a fire blanket. He’d be Raffles, the gentleman bouncer.
Then he said he would want to keep his regular job, so it would have to be a moonlighting gig, and by this time had got far enough into his flight of fancy that he was wondering how long he could work two jobs before he got tired. I said that wouldn’t be an issue because of all the adrenaline from being punched in the head, and then we had a conversation about burnout, which is the other thing middle-aged people talk about when they are not imagining how good they would be at all jobs.
