Pneu

Last night after picking up the week's shopping in Sainsbury's, I got back to the car to find one of my back tyres had completely deflated - the culprit seems to be a splinter of stone-like material embedded in the tyre itself... I wasn't impressed, not least because my spare is one of those wee emergency ones which limit you to 50mph, but on the other hand I had been thinking I needed new rear tyres anyway.

The two bright-sides to having to go and get it sorted out this morning (you can't keep driving on an emergency spare for long) were firstly the very lovely mechanic I dealt with at Kwik-Fit. We liked him! (by which I mean I did): he was sexy in a very straight-forwardly Scottish way, and he had a lovely voice which made me calm down about the whole thing. With being so much later into town than usual I hit lots of very bad traffic, and then got to Kwik Fit to find I'd left my walet in my other trousers (which of course I'd changed a wheel in and couldn't wear to work.) So all in all I was more than a little stressed, but he had a calm and capable air to him and made me feel it was all alright...

*cough*

anyway... The other thing just made me laugh. One of the other customers waiting was a friendly middle aged woman - one of these types who needs to keep finding things to talk to people about in waiting rooms. I'm just the opposite: I can happily sit quietly the whole time, but I'll also (usually) make the effort to be friendly...

After another lady she'd been talking to left Talky Lady and I chatted happily away about nothing in particular for a while, and then kind of ran out of things to say. Like I said this is fine by me, but I don't think she enjoyed silence - she kept leafing through the papers and engaging me in short conversations about bits of news. After a few minutes of this she reached a full page article (with pictures) about a gay screen-kiss that apparently aired recently on Coronation Street (the paper in question was 'the Sun', and you can always rely on it to cut right to the really serious issues... *rolls eyes*) anyway it was on the little table between us so I could see both the article and (via the wrinkle of her nose at seeing it) what was coming. This isn't a word for word transcript but it's pretty close (tone of voice is in brackets)

Talky Lady: "ugh..." pushes paper about a bit, like a finiky child might with sprouts on her plate. Flips pages back and then forward, then returns to offending photograph (declarative)"I don't like all this stuff on TV nowadays."
Patrick: (friendly and neutrally interested) "what's that?"
TL: "Well there's all this..." pause (disgusted) gestures at paper "... gay stuff!"
P: raises eyebrow (non-committal with a dash of surprise) "oh?"
TL: (more declarative) "it's just disgusting seeing it on Telly."
P: eyebrow edges higher (amusedly questioning) "really?"
TL: realisation dawns that's she might have misjudged this (pre-emptively defensive) "of course I don't mean gay people..." shuffles paper again "... I don't have a problem with gay people but"* (adopts tone of one describing the smell of vomit) "seeing it..."
P: involuntarily pulls the "hmm" face (adopts tone you'd use to say 'that's nice dear') "I see."

... At this point she'd picked up that this wasn't a line of conversation she was going to enroll me in and some idea of how she sounded. So she began frantically back-pedalling, embarrassedly covering for her exposed bigotry like someone who's just realised their knickers are showing. I managed not to laugh.

A long-ish monologue followed about how there was just too much kissing on TV really and of course it really didn't matter if it was a man and a woman or a man and a man she "just didn't need to see that"... (perhaps I'm maligning her and she really has reacted with disgust to all the billions of straight screen kisses she's seen screened in her life... but I doubt it.) after a few minutes of which I took pity and threw her an exit line about most programs just using it to be sensational anyway (which is true) and it often having nothing to do with the plot. This let her off talking about it any more, much to her apparent relief.

What amused me was the way in which, without saying or even really intoning any direct disapproval, I'd managed to make it abundantly clear just how far out of line her "disgusting" comment was... (and that part is quoted verbatim.) From then on the poor woman remained quite uncomfortable, and when when the mechanics waved that they'd finished patching up her Mondeo, she had the look of one released from death row!


* Incidentally why does anyone ever bother saying this? it's the conversational equivalent of strapping a big flashing neon sign to ones self which reads "homophobe in denial"