Mate of mine from the army kept bragging he could bench two swans. Together. Got together with him and a couple of mutual friends one night after a tour out in Basra and, after a few drinks in honour of a fallen comrade, he mentioned the swan thing, off-hand like. I usually let these things pass but Steve, one of the mutuals, he's not the type to let bullshit slip. He calls my mate on it, tells him he's all mouth and no trousers, so my mate - who's pretty wasted at this point - downs his pint and tells us to come with him. We wandered down out of the street and into this park and, sure enough, there were a few swans around, sleeping, swimming, swan shit, y'know. Anyway so my mate tells this Steve guy to go get him a swan, only Steve isn't stupid, he knows that approaching a live, adult swan with questionable intentions is gonna cause a stir, get a few feathers ruffled if you pardon the expression, so Steve gets some random hobo to get the swans for us, but tells the hobo our intentions are pure. Hobo goes up to the swans and, seeing as the swans don't sense any ulterior, shady motives to his approach, quite happily follow him over to where the four of us are standing. We give the hobo a tenner and the remains of a tinny we'd brought, he leaves, and its just us and the two swans. Things are pretty tense. I mean, I get an Iraqi flashback right there and then - last autumn, clearing out a house that was officially abandoned but that we knew was an occasional hold-up for some of the insurgents. Got surprised while checking a basement for tripwires, just me and this arab kid, can't have been more than nineteen, a knife, a scared look. He came for me and, y'know, it was him or me. I'm trained. It was him. So anyway, the swans probably realise they've been had at this point, that they aren't gonna be getting no swan treats or little swan biscuits and that the whole thing was a set-up from the start. My mate doesn't give a shit. Gets a swan by the neck and sits down, lowers his back to the ground. The swan is pretty fucking angry but isn't resisting too much, just honking and squawking at my mate, but if anything it's lambasting itself for walking straight into this swan-benching trap. My mate calls over to me to hand him the other swan for the other arm, and me and swan number two just look at each other. In its fearful, betrayed stare I see, again, the big, brown eyes of the Iraqi kid, and it almost causes me to stop, to back out. A chance at redemption, maybe, like if I refuse to hand over this displeased, outmanoevred cygnet then I'm a little of the way back to becoming the guy I was before the war. I grabbed it. I was drunk and, besides, I'd have to yield ill-gotten supremacy over a thousand more swans before I could atone for even one of the dead foreigners my job demanded of me. The swan was struggling, letting off the odd sickened 'honk' but, all the same, I shoved it in my mate's direction. He grabs it by the leg and folds the leg underneath the swan's abdomen, trying to find its centre of gravity, and does the same with the first swan. I take a step back. I needed to be there for my mate but, y'know, if the shit hits the fan then I aint taking no bullshit from no anatidae. My mate looks up at me, says 'watch this', and he goes to make the first rep.

He quit drinking soon after.