Yesterday morning I found that my car had been blocked in by a white van. It was a handyman's van, painted in red and blue and my initial irritation melted a bit when I looked over the road and saw a man up a ladder, wearing the same colours as his van. I do like it when people dress to match arbitrary objects in their life. I can't, I drive a Toyota Yaris Verso (THE number one car of choice for the elderly and disabled, ladies..) in an eggy beige colour, the only sartorial match would be an NHS neck brace. This is a shame, but I console myself by accessorising to match the bins. Big, green, suspicious liquids.
I walked across the road and called "Excuse me?" at the man up the ladder. In response a bloody huge bull mastiff appeared from NOWHERE and leapt at me, snarling. Fortunately he was on a lead, unfortunately at the other end of the leash was an extremely wispy, ineffectual specimen of man. I have never seen anyone who looked more like bellybutton lint. He could've been any age between 21 and dead. He was trying to hold the dog back but all he was doing was slowing it down. So the dog was advancing on me slowly, dragging a man behind, which frankly just added to the menace. It was like the dog was saying "look how strong I am, I might do some press-ups while I eat you."
Wispy Lint man apologised: "He doesn't like aggression." I turned this sentence over in my mind. It didn't actually seem like much of an apology, in fact it seemed a bit...accusatory, with twattiness drizzled all over it. "I wasn't being aggressive" I said. "Yes, you were," Wispy Lint whimpered, "you were yelling at that poor man up the ladder." These sort of half-men pullulate around this neighbourhood, men so middle-class they whisper everything, obsess over condiments like fetishists and presumably keep their severed nuts in the fruit bowl.
"I wasn't being fu..." I stopped, realising the ridiculous situation I was now in. I was all geared up for a fight. I admit, I am a bit 'fighty', I get this from my Mum, we have no shame in a stand-up yelling row with a stranger in Morrisons over being barged by a trolley. If anything, we rather like it, gets the blood pumping, you get a chance to exercise all your best swears and the only downside is a stranger thinks you're a prick. I've done a talking head show, I bet plenty of people saw that and now think I'm a prick. I'm comfy with that, my only regret is that I didn't get the fun of calling them Nature's Biggest Mistake And Yes I Am Counting Hitler in the Biscuit aisle.
But this man had called me aggressive when I WASN'T being aggressive. And he'd done it in an infuriatingly passive-aggressive way. So now I wanted to yell at him, but to do so would be to prove him right. It was a knotty problem, and one being watched by the man up the ladder. It's like when someone tells you they know you fancy them and they're sorry they don't feel the same. There's no way to convince them that you really don't actually fancy them. I've been shoved into this situation several times, you cannot win it. Short of pouncing on them, ripping their clothes off then puking, disgusted, all over their unsheathed body, you will always look like a big sad sack of unrequited love.
So I settled for ripping old Wispy Lint apart, in soothing tones. Which was as creepy and weird as it sounds. "I wasn't being aggressive," I trilled melodically. "I was trying to get the attention of a man up a ladder, it can't be done with a whisper." "No, he pouted, "you were aggressive, there was no need to be so horrid." (He actually said "so horrid". Surely no one but that lisping brat from Just William has this vocabulary.)
"Well maybe your dog is over-sensitive," I warbled. A songbird landed on my head. "Perhaps he's dangerously over-sensitive. Perhaps one day a child will sneeze in a pitch that displeases him, and lose a nose." At this point the man had descended from the ladder to defend me. "It's alright mate," he said, in reasonable tones (thankfully, for the sake of his nose). "There's no harm done."
Wait... "No harm done"?! What a shitty defence, that's basically announcing "Look, she was rude and aggressive, but I'm prepared to turn the other cheek." That wasn't fair, I had been polite even though he'd blocked my car in by, frankly, parking like some sort of despotic tit too lordly to acknowledge things like double yellow lines and simple basic manners.
"Brilliant, thank you for you that" I crooned sarcastically at him. A small crowd had gathered at this point, regrettably, as I didn't feel I had covered myself in glory. You must remember this argument had been conducted entirely in whispering sing-song, with me backing away throughout, pursued very slowly by a snarling dog dragging a man made of fluff, while a man dressed like a van walked alongside this slow backwards funless Mardi Gras, looking like he was definitely someone's carer.
I then gently and tunefully called the dog-owner a string of my favourite insults, which I'd love to share, but they are mine and excellent, and if you and I ever got into a fight I don't want you to be as well-armed as I. Although, if we started slinging insults around and found we had a lot of favourite ones in common, would that derail the fight and make us warm to each other? "Oh I like f***** c***-sucking k****-mongerer too! Oh that's so funny, I've never been on the receiving end of it, it's got some game hasn't it? I feel crushed!"
So if you live near London's N10 beware, there is a dog that considers anything above a whisper to be a car-jacking and responds appropriately, and there's a man leashed to him who is so annoying he'll make your gums itch. They're like a pair of nun-chucks, with something toxic either end, and hopefully one day they'll meet a tiny, passive-aggressive dog, with a huge angry man the other side, battle will commence and other bits of Wispy Lint can join his nuts in the fruit bowl.