Deep in the throes of a wild night of drink and good times and attractive women, I felt the need for relief. So off to the bathroom of the crowded Hilton bar it was, as one does. The bathroom was surprisingly deserted but as is etiquette in these situations, I moved along to the far side of the urinal- the far right- to get the business done. A rumble at the door and who is it but none other than an old political adversary, a man I have tangled with on many a time back in the day. He dually took his spot on far left. Entirely appropriate. There was plenty of history there, plenty of student politics stoushes that were nothing more than sport in all reality. Your troublemaking author ran a ticket called The Right Way, a vain yet amusing attempt to stomp the lefty in the head and get their hand off the till. We played it hard and tough in a none-too-welcoming environment, highlighting the failures of others and hammering some tough-to-sell policies. He would get his boys in power to threaten action and would yell at high volume of the plight of refugees and the criminality of voluntary student unionism and the dark evil that resided in the soul of those on the right, yours truly included. He’d put up posters and Old Punt would rip them down. We’d debate, we’d argue, we’d stand toe-to-toe. Hell, we even threw hands. And there we stood, many years later, two aging men with heavy testicles, him on the left and me on the right, politics and six metres of stainless steel urinal between us.
