DUNBAR SELF DEFENCE

Dark nights & Flashlights

With the onset of the autumn/winter season nights become longer and shrouded in darkness, this is the time when you would be well advised to carry with you a portable light source, apart from it’s obvious benefit to emergency situations it is also a great aide to everyday life.

Any personal item small enough to be carried in a pocket or hand bag can be easily dropped and become a devil to find in the dark as it never seems to land at your feet but bounces, rolls and slides off into the darkest recess that can be found, something as simple as a flashlight is the very thing that you need to help in the search for your valuables.

Dog walkers, joggers, in fact anyone with reason to be out during the hours of darkness have good reason to carry a personal flashlight simply to illuminate their path.

One of the problems that we see with the majority people using a flashlight is the way in which they carry it, usually with their hand hanging by their side and pointing at the ground a very short distance in front of their feet, a much better way is to carry your flashlight at eye level, offering a longer, wider illumination.

This also allows you to easily direct the full beam into the eyes of any potentially unsavoury characters who may approach you with dubious intentions, disrupting their plans just long enough for you to escape or defend a bad situation.

To make your flashlight easier to carry and not drop especially if you are going to be running add a lanyard or small strap which can easily be attached to the tail end of your flashlight placed around the back of your hand and looped over the bezel, this will leave you hands free for other tasks.

There are a multitude of flashlights available on the market and you should have no problem finding one to suit your hand size.

The authors preferred every day carry is a small L.E.D. light which is carried on a key ring, with the ring large enough to slip over a finger, this again makes it easy to hold at eye level and almost impossible to drop when on the move.

Alan Beckett

It’s an awareness issue, too many people never get outside of their own head or at least not nearly often enough, we are all guilty at some point of wandering around in our own little bubble oblivious to the surrounding environment.

Getting outside your head is one thing staying there is another, it’s harder than you might think especially when you didn’t realise that you were stuck inside in the first place, your conscious mind is constantly being shown pictures and replayed sounds from your recent memory, it’s like the replay button on your digital TV and you are interacting with it, trying to put it all in some sort of order, imaging different responses and formulating answers to questions and events that have just or very recently occurred “I should have said this”, “I should have done that”, you try to run the programme forward guessing what role others may play in the scenario.

You are making plans for your immediate future, what you would like to happen today and hoping that it will come to fruition, this to is being played out like a short movie inside your head.

Modern living encourages you stay inside your head, comfortable cars with heated seats and in-car- entertainment centres, MP3 players that you plug straight into your head and of course the mobile phone screen that every teenager seems to have their eyes glued to all determine to keep you locked up in your own little bubble while the rest of the world passes you by.

The old adage “accidents don’t happen they’re caused” has a very large grain of truth in it, lots of people have been run down by cars that they just didn’t see coming, how do you not see a one ton metal box travelling along the road, that’s just one example I’m not going to make a list, I’m sure we could all come up with many more the fact is many accidents do happen because the victim was inside his own head instead outside.

So how do you get outside your head ? well one way is to become an active part of your environment, don’t put things in your ears that are going to deaden the sound of a speeding car or drown out the voice of child crying for help or the growling dog that’s about to bite your backside, try to avoid typing that text message if means that you are going trip over the slightly raised paving stone or walk into that glass door.

I’m not saying don’t use MP3s or text your friends just do it at the appropriate time, obscuring your senses is one of the largest hurdles to getting outside your head, you have to be able to see, hear and feel what’s going on not just around you but ahead of you, behind you for as far as you possibly can.

Raise your head slightly when you are out and about, it’s natural when walking to have a visual drop point, you look ahead a certain distance until your eye line finally meets the footpath or road this point is different for everyone and beyond this point you are not going to notice if a speeding car turns into the road or a child begins to wander too close to the kerb, by being conscious of this and making a physical effort to push that point farther away you will increase the amount of visual information that filters into brain.

Your eyes are amazing tools, get the most from them by making sure that you process the information they feed you properly, how many times have you looked at your watch only to have to look again when someone asks you what time it said, this is very common it’s called looking without seeing, when you look at anything tell yourself what it is that you see, process the information, don’t just see a car coming, see a red 4×4 travelling to fast for a built up area with a front seat passenger.

Your ears are also wonderful tools, hearing range for our purpose is harder to determine than visual but it’s just as easy to work on improving it because you are trying to hear things that are farther away, you simply trying to better process the audio information that you are receiving, obviously you are not going to do this with your headphones in or the car stereo blasting.

Pay attention to the sounds that you hear again many people listen with hearing, how often have you asked someone to repeat a comment that you actually heard the first time, sometimes you hear what you think is being said and not what is actually being said, you seem to have a constant internal dialogue going on which gets processed much faster than external sounds that have to come in through the ears so give yourself a second or two to process the incoming information, is that male voice or a female one in the background, was that glass breaking or a wind chime that you heard, if the sound of an engine is getting louder which direction is it coming from.

Interact with your environment, don’t cross the road twenty yards from the traffic lights walk a little farther, don’t double park to be right outside the shop, park where it’s safe, don’t just glance over your shoulder before crossing a busy street take the time to do it properly, look both ways and listen for the sound of a car that you may not have seen, speak to people, say good morning to the people that you walk past every day, notice if a shop window display has changed, notice if a house has had it’s curtains drawn all day, if you have certain routes that you habitually use don’t be complacent look for anything that’s out of place, listen for sounds that you don’t usually hear.

In short become an active part of your environment and get outside your head.

Alan Beckett

Go to any train station and just watch the commuters coming and going, one of the first things that you will notice these days is the large number of laptop bags that are carried, you may also notice a seemingly endless line of people with their heads down looking at their hand while their thumb dances frantically across the keypad of a mobile phone.

What a gift for any would be thief, a valuable computer easily and quickly re- sellable on the black market, being carried casually by someone so engrossed in their text messages that wont know what has happened until they feel the bag tugged from their hand and see it disappearing up the road at high speed in the hands of a hooded Dick Turpin, a simple scenario that can often be avoided.

Only carry your laptop if really have to, if you can leave it at the office or at home then do so, if you have to take files from one location to another look at the possibility of loading them on to a flash/pen drive which can be easily dropped into a pocket, if you are only carrying the laptop in order to watch a DVD on the move, buy a book and save the movies for the comfort of your front room.

If you must carry the laptop with you avoid the usual brief case type of bag it’s just a red rag to a bull, try a good quality backpack this way your laptop is secured to your person and very difficult to snatch and run, it also keeps both of your hands free to deal with any situation that may arise, if you are travelling in very crowded areas and are fearful of someone behind gaining access to you bag simply move it round to the front and wear it like a papoose until you have a more secure surrounding.

Do not text as you walk along, this takes your awareness away completely, you are looking down narrowing your field of vision, concentrating on your message and neither see or hear clearly who or what is around you, it is so easy to step off the kerb or walk straight into someone that has been waiting to slip their hand into your pocket or worse still pull you into an alley or a car.

Find a suitable spot to stop and make your call or compose your message, preferably where there other people, where it’s well lit and there is limited opportunity for anyone to approach you covertly.

Mobiles and laptops are prime targets for thieves don’t make it easy for them.

Alan Beckett