I am in the supermarket in Falmouth. Ahead of me, a studenty-type accidentally brushes against the trolly of a man wearing a tracksuit.
STUDENT: Oh, I'm terribly sorry.
MAN: Fuck off, queer.
STUDENT: Er...
Student walks away and join a queue. Man starts pointing at him.
MAN: (chanting) Queer, queer, queer, queer...
ME: (annoyed) Oy!
MAN: (instantly) Shut up.
ME: You shut up.
MAN: Fuck off.
A brief pause as I try and think of a comeback. The supermarket is tensed in expectation. Finally:
ME: No, you fuck off.*
SUPERMARKET: Oooooooh...
We glare at each other. Eventually he does fuck off.
LADY ON TILL: Ooh, don't worry about him love, he's mental.
ME: (sternly) Yes, well, that's no excuse.
* Like Jeff Goldblum.
James, you were very brave, that's all I can say. You definitely don't cross the care in the community gang here in Shangri La!
ReplyDeleteI'm not that brave - he was quite short, and very normal-looking, which is why I was so shocked. If he'd been bigger and tattoed, I'm ashamed to say I probably would have tutted and then run away.
ReplyDeleteI was wearing a hoodie.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness to David Cameron (argh) he never said 'hug a hoodie', and has been pointed out that he can't even deny saying it, because then the words could be taken out of context, and people could say "Ahhhh you did say 'hug a hoodie'."
The problem is, whenever someone behaves unpleasantly in public, someone always says 'oh he's got mental problems/is depressed/whatever'. Right, because otherwise he'd be handing out flowers and Rufus Wainwright compilation CDs.
I'm not sure what my point is. I'd probably better go and do some work now.
Wow! Not only do you have Great Hair (TM), but you are Witty.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, go you!
Probably half the population has got some kind of mental problem (or is it just here in the U.S.? ;-) ). I doubt that gives them the right to be unpleasant, because that would be really unfair to the rest of us sane ones. Well, assuming I'm one of the sane ones. We'd never get to have any fun.
I hereby dub thee, James, Defender of the Fey.
ReplyDeleteTee hee! See what I did there??
Well, if I didn't laugh at my own jokes no-one would...
Ooh, this is just like Die Hard.
ReplyDeleteGood on you, I hate it when people just stand back and let others be victimised in petty, arsey ways like that.
ReplyDeleteI've had about twelve fellas on my books so far who have punched people in the face and suchlike after behaving in such a questionable manner in similar situations, and only three of them have an actual mental health problem, and only two out of those are cases where the mental health prob is relevant to the arsey behaviour. The rest are just arseholes. (That's a technical probation term. Don't try to understand, oh puny lay people.)
You should have marched in on a white horse.
ReplyDeleteI mean, it's good what you did, but...
You are the wind beneath my wings.
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right James, being a mental is absolutely no excuse for being rude in a supermarket.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if he had killed you to death, there and then, his mentalness would probably be a perfectly valid excuse.
In which I wouldn't have blamed him at all. But there's no excuse for public rudeness.
ReplyDeleteDid you go away and shake for ten minutes afterwards? Being short, I only confront people when they've been rude to my Mum, which makes me very, very cross. On both occasions they were very tall men, whom I shouted up at for a bit about the value of good manners, and then told to run along, which surprisingly they did. Inevitably afterwards, there is an oo-er moment. Maybe I'm the loony.
ReplyDeleteI just read about a case in Newcastle, when a 19-year-old stabbed a 16-year-old who was celebrating his GCSE results.
ReplyDeleteThe defence counsel pleaded in mitigation that the assailant "had self-esteem issues".
Whether his low self-esteem was justified was not mentioned.
There's an interesting-looking Adam Curtis documentary on Sunday BB2 9pm, called The Trap, which looks how any deviation from the economists' norm is classified as a mental problem, something which the medical industry does very well out of...
ReplyDelete(not you, realdoc)
you're well 'ard
ReplyDeleteTry doing that in a Glasgow supermarché and you'd get stabbed.
ReplyDeleteOr 'chibbed'.
Which is pretty much the same.
If only the world was filled with more people like you it would be a better place..........
ReplyDeleteIn the interest of balance, I should point out that on the way home, I kicked a unicorn to death and stabbed a Care Bear.
ReplyDeleteClearly the Unicorn was rude, and the Care Bear was distrubing the peace...
ReplyDeleteJames Henry - Etiquette Enforcer. Style Guru; all-round polite man of the people. With great hair.
Is there a superhero called "Captain Manners"?
ReplyDeleteNow that reminds me of - oddly enough - The Tall Guy. When Jeff Goldblum is attending an ac-tors' workshop. He even says "no, YOU fuck off."
ReplyDeleteIs it something about tall men?
He does say that! I love that bit, I'd forgotten all about it. Clearly I was going for some sort of homage.
ReplyDeleteJust seen a sneaky preview of Jeff's new TV series 'Raines', in which he is a detective who can see the head - but in his brain, it doesn't seem to be a supernatural thing. Anyway, story is ok, but Jeffness is set to 11 (just watch his walk in the first minute, it's brilliant) and that's fine by me.
I assume when you left the supermarket you thought of something extremely witty to say?
ReplyDeleteGod I love supermarkets.
ReplyDelete