Alex Grant and his boyfriend were holding hands and walking home from the Highgate Men’s pond of a muggy July evening when a pair of men began to shout at them. The men – one tall, one short, equally bald – were slouched against some shop shutters. Neither Alex nor his boyfriend understood the language they were shouting in, but their hostility was apparent.
The couple continued along past their abusers, trying to pay them no heed. But as they did so, they heard loud hawking noises – and each felt a wetness against their right leg. Alex’s boyfriend recalls looking down to see green phlegm gunked against his skin. They had been spat on. They began to hurry away. The taller man, a glum, hard-looking figure, rose to follow. He plucked an orange from an off-licence fruit stand and hurled it after them. It missed, narrowly.
‘Fuck off whores!’, he called, in what would eventually turn out to be Polish. ‘Fucking gays! Fuck off whores! Fuck off whores!’
The couple broke into a run; the man ran after them, scooping the errant foodstuff up off the floor and throwing it again. Once more, it missed. Alex and his boyfriend kept sprinting until the men were just barely in sight.
