Health and safety

I grew up in a high threat environment where street violence was a regular occurrence and you could get beaten up (or worse) for simply looking the wrong way at people or, indeed, for nothing at all - except for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Growing up like that you learn a number of survival techniques - street smarts, if you will. You don't make eye-contact with strangers, you go out of your way to avoid groups of young men on street corners, eschew a range of behaviours that might mark you out as a victim and, most importantly, you don't hang around with dickheads. In this context, "dickhead" is a technical term for someone whose behavior is likely to result in them (and anyone who's with them) getting the crap beaten out of them.

Example: It's just past closing time outside a fish and chip shop in a rough area of Liverpool. One of the guys I've been out drinking with starts staring down a group of seven or eight lads who are waiting in line to buy chips. The inevitable challenge: "What the fuck are you looking at?" is met by my companion with: "I don't know. They don't label shit round here." At which point, the fighting kicks off. My companion was a dickhead.

Christopher Hitchens on the other hand...