Two bitchy men and a hag
Sometimes I wonder what possesses a person to bitch at a complete stranger. I had the misfortune of being at the receiving end on three occasions. The first two, both delivered by men, happened on the first and second days in London. The first when we returned to the hotel to properly check in after lunch. I was entering the revolving doors behind what looked like a business man, when all of a sudden the automatic doors stopped. I gave them a small push, maybe they weren’t as automatic as they claim to be, when that monkey in a suit turned half around, eyebrows so far up his forehead they had disappeared into his hairline, index finger raised and swinging in a circular motion as he hissed: “You DO NOT push the doors!” I was appalled by his rude behaviour and started making fun of him. Sometimes the troll in me has enough and shows people what dumbasses they are.
The second bitchy-man encounter happened on our way to the Harry Potter studios. We were at a train station and had to look for a specific platform. I got turned around, trying to get my bearing, when suddenly a man walked past me, cutting off my path. I started and twitched. He had the audacity to turn around and call out: “Patience, how about patience?” Well, how about manners? A man shouldn’t walk up to a woman that close in the first place.
The hag makes an appearance a bit later in the trip, but it will be worth the wait.
It turns out my mom and I loved walking, and walked an average of about 7 hours each day we spent in London.
On the third day we made our way to Westminster Abbey, a magnificent indoor cemetery, as my mom calls it.
We may have also been within spitting distance of royalty as a handful of black cars accompanied by police made their way past Westminster Abbey. Some said Harry and Meghan were in the car with the tinted windows. We had lunch at the Westminster Arms, fish and chips for me, of course, and a burger for my mom and then walked to Buckingham Palace amidst preparations for the London marathon happening the next day.
We walked through St. James Park and made our way back to Westminster Bridge, recorded a silly video, took some pictures, crossed the bridge and started heading direction hotel. On our way, we found a few spots my brother and I walked past during our trip to London almost 11 years ago and we recreated some of those photos as well. We had a pit stop at a café with a very interesting vibe. Thankfully we only had tea/coffee there. We walked past London Eye all the way to London Bridge, where my mom pretended to be Bridget Jones, sashaying across the bridge (I have video evidence of that as well). Hungry and feet hurting, we basically crawled to the pizza place, craving a good dinner, only to find it closed. Google said it was open. This was neither the first nor the last time Google was utterly wrong on this trip.
It was one of those evenings where no one wanted to feed us. All the pubs we stopped at had closed early or were about to close early, except for one, which wasn’t that good.
Sunday was the London marathon, with most of the city containing the popular sights packed with people, so we made our way to Harrod’s. It was another gorgeous day and I couldn’t believe our luck. Within seconds of entering Harrod’s, however; I began feeling very sick: headache, strange nauseous feeling, loss of appetite and dizziness. I thought I just needed something to eat and had the most delicious fish I had on this entire trip. It was wonderful until I saw the price. An almost crippling feeling of guilt came over me and I couldn’t finish my lunch. We browsed for a bit after lunch, stopping in the book and spirits department, receiving great customer service, before heading to the bus to go to Piccadilly Circus. As soon as I breathed fresh air, all the aforementioned symptoms disappeared. I always enjoy stopping by Harrod’s, but the amount of fragrance in the air (they have complimentary bottles in the lady’s washrooms) made me physically ill.
Once again, we thought pizza would be nice for dinner and Google said again the pizza place would be open…nope. So once again we found ourselves looking for a place to eat and found “Natural Kitchen”. The food was really good, the price kind of high, and a lot of ingredients in my burger patty, but I had no trouble with it.
Monday, St. George’s Day, and Kate Middleton was in labour. We headed to Notting Hill to check out a few bookstores and hoping to find a smoking pipe for my brother. Out of the three bookstores we visited “Daunt Books” was the one with the most welcoming atmosphere and the biggest selection. I stubbled upon “Milk and Honey” Rupi Kaur and began reading it and finished it in the “Notting Hill Bookstore” (apparently, it’s the one featured in the movie “Notting Hill”). A note of warning, if you are ever in the Notting Hill neighbourhood and in search of “Simply Cigars”, it doesn’t exist per se. It’s a homerun business, that sells their products only online. Overall, I have to admit that Notting Hill isn’t my kind of neighbourhood. It happens. It’s pretty and interesting, but we found quite a few people acted almost intruded when we entered their shops. God forbid we wanted to spend money in their store.
Now, it’s finally time for the hag to enter the story. We took the bus towards Piccadilly Circus to find a cigar and pipe shop. That bus route took us past Kensington Palace and once again we saw a couple of black cars with tinted windows accompanied by police. It turned out Kate was on her way back to the palace from the hospital after having given birth that very morning. Twice we were extremely close to royalty, that makes us royalty by proximity, right? You may now call me Lady Elliot.
We had to transfer buses to get to our destination, the cigar shop. When the bus arrived, I got on and walked towards the back, like it should be, so other people getting on after me would have space enough to make it onto the bus. It’s that easy, don’t be rude and don’t block the way. I stopped by the two-seater designated for people, who need to sit. For the record I remained standing, never intending to sit.
I held on to the bar and minded my own business. I heard someone talking, but didn’t think anything of it, why would someone talk to me? I didn’t stand in the way. I looked down at the woman (the hag, because she looked like the one from a nightmare I once had), with her wispy red hair teased and sprayed into a high bun that look more like a bird’s nest and her perfect string of pearls around her throat, sitting in one of the designated seats addressing me. In a clipped tone she said: “You can’t sit here.”
My answer: “I’m not sitting down, ma’am,” and looked straight ahead out of the window.
The hag poked me in the arm to get my attention again: “You can’t sit here. See it’s for handicapped people.” And points theatrically at the sign.
Me, through clenched teeth: “I am not sitting down. I’m only letting people pass!”
I moved to the other side of the bus, angry, joining my mom and told her what just happened, saying that apparently, I always have to repeat myself for people to understand me. I said that loud enough for the hag to hear.
Another woman sitting two rows away looked at me and said: “she has been a nasty one since Sloan Square. Can’t leave people alone. She told others to shut up when they were talking on the phone. And now she touched this woman [me]. She has no manners.”
That got the attention of two men, one who was sitting behind the woman and the other who was the recipient of the hag’s previous nastiness. The first man agreed, saying she has no manners, is a nasty woman and should never touch another person. The second was laughing at her rudeness. The woman turned to the hag and said, if she had a problem with people she shouldn’t take public transportation. Maybe we just aren’t posh enough to sit beside her.
Surely the hag had now one of the most unpleasant bus rides ever experienced.
Call me sensitive, but I can demand my right of personal space to be respected; one should not talk to me, touch me or otherwise acknowledge my existence unless it is absolutely necessary. I wished all three passengers a wonderful day and I felt comforted that there are still good people in the world.
