I'll try and keep this brief and to the point.
Tonight, shortly after starting my last run out of Peckham, two 'youths' went to board my bus. The first made to get on without showing me a ticket of any sort. His companion attempted to bring his mountain bike on board. Bikes simply aren't allowed on buses so first of all I told him to get off. He argued a bit but I wasn't having any of it- the rules are clear on this point. At this point the first guy came back and I asked him for a ticket. He claimed to be 15 but didn't look it, and in any case 14 and 15 year olds are required to have a Child Oyster Card to get free travel. After a minute or so of total, but reasonably polite intransigence from me they both got off, at which point a couple of other passengers who'd been waiting patiently got on.
Just as I was preparing to depart, the first youth jumped back on carrying a bottle of soft drink and proceeded to liberally spray it through the gap in the assault scrren, totally soaking me. In a total rage, I jumped out of the cab, and persued him up the road. He had a ten yard start though, and I'd left the cab open with the engine running, so I soon gave up, albeit cursing him out as a coward.. At this point mountain bike boy squared up to me and invited me to get back in my cab, lest I suffer a beating. By this point a third youth (who up until that point, I'm guessing, had merely planned to see his friends onto the bus) was loitering with what looked like malicious intent. This being Peckham, I decided to unwillingly retire.
So, my questions are thus:
1: What exactly counts as provocation? Had I been lucky enough to catch up with the first youth, would I have had a reasonable excuse to rearrange his face?
2: Ditto. Would explicitly threatening me have been excuse enough for me to stick one on mountain bike boy? I could easily have broken his nose with a quick jab (or a Glasgow Kiss).
3. As things stand, should I bother making a complaint to the police? The bus has CCTV cameras all over, and I could easily get the footage. I also have the empty bottle of pop wrapped in a plastic bag; a cursory inspection revealed partial fingerprints galore. OTOH, compared to the shootings, stabbings etc. that seem to go on in Peckham on a pretty regular basis, I'm smart enough to realise that a bus driver getting doused in fizzy drink is pretty small beer, and I don't particularly want to waste the police's time.
I'm less than cock-a-hoop at the evening's proceedings though, as you can probably tell.
Thoughts?