Looks like Mrs P was right, after all.

When I was a kid growing up in relatively affluent but in some ways culturally ignorant Muswell Hill in the 1960s I was an inmate at the notorious William Grimshaw school in Creighton Avenue. Subsequently it became Creighton (and got joys of accolades from people with double-barreled names with kids who were called Tarquin, Jasper, Jocaster and so on) and was the doyen of the chattering weekend socialists en route to Islington. And then it became "Fortismere."

Frankly as one of the few yids there Christmas and Easter weren’t particularly happy times. The ignorant and bigoted RE teachers musings on such matters didn’t help. Most of the blacks hated us yids more than the evangelical Catholics did! It was tricky to figure out which lot to avoid. Black catholic males were, in the main, a particular hassle.

We got no shit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses though. It left a sort of soft-spot for me about them. Recognising that red-sea pedestrians stood no chance of conversion they left us alone. When I learned of their situation re incarceration in the death camps I fell somewhere between respect and the folly of faith re them. The Muslims were benign towards us as were the Greek Orthodox and Zoroastrians. Buddhists were thin on the ground and generally blended in. 

Anyway  ... I learned quickly that turning the other cheek resulted in that second cheek getting a kicking. I was running out of healthy cheeks. And so I learned to use my fists. And pretty good I became too although in retrospect I should have been more confident of my strength years beforehand. After frightening a bully into submission, and his thug-compatriots too in front of an entire classroom (it really was a good performance I feel – more Lee Strasbourg than Royal Shakespeare ) I suffered no more. That was that. Or so I thought.

My aggressive (both mental and physical) demeanor continued beyond school into university and beyond that - but through the years, and coming to recognise that the stance didn’t have to be polished and refined with such vigour as hitherto, I became a more reasonable person – so I’m told.

So what’s the point of this ‘confession’ – especially now that I've switched from Ju-Jitsu to Krav Maga? Well, in that random way that minds can throw up events long buried, I remember an incident one night in a pub in East End Road (East Finchley} in the early 1970s. I was only recently married. I was at that point a tarmac spreader and very fit. A drunken aussie in the bar made an anti-Semitic (very mild in retrospect) comments to a Sephardic-looking bar worker. She wasn’t in a position to respond.

My wife, sensing my change of stance and balling of fists gently whispered that it probably wasn’t worth it. Chris, not being a red-sea pedestrian like me took a different perspective. She opined as follows. 

First, he probably said it out of cultural ignorance rather than deliberate malice. Give him the benefit of the doubt! He didn’t persist and the young girl coped. And finally, Chris wasn’t entirely clear if I was going to inflict GBH or ABH or both and in any event neither would look good on my CV.  She knew I'd enjoy it either way and that wasn't healthy for anyone.

And most telling of all, and I've never forgotten this – if you are (Howard) always on the look-out for anti-Semitism, you’ll always find it. 

She then went on to point out that there are varying degrees and that much, but by no means all, is just off-hand ignorance. There was a clear implication that part of the wisdom of me not becoming a thug was to realise when brute force inc hard fists (with no fear of pain received or reluctance to inflict it) are entirely appropriate, and when they aren't. That advice has served me in very good stead through the intervening years.