On Grans, Fancy Dress and Chivalry

Shake is the 50's version of Revolver (60's club night) where my friend Martin (aka Coops) is a DJ.  Since I was going to a fancy dress party*, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and dress up.  I bought the dress at a back street shop, and I hafta say, I love it.  My Granny is totally right: wearing red makes you feel better.

Doesn't Alex look just like Seth Cohen from the OC?  I wish you could see the rest of his outfit and how he dances.  It's really uncanny.

On a side note, you know what else makes you feel better?  Peanut brittle.  My Granny sent me two tins of it, and although I shared with loads of people, I'm still eating through it this morning.  Usually, on Christmas day, everyone else is eating one of the delicious cakes that someone or Granny bakes, but I always just sit with a tin of peanut brittle in front of me.  The warden on my hall, Scottish Reg (who sounds like Sean Connery), left a note in my mailbox because I gave him some of the brittle.  The note read:

"Hi Wendy    I am now your grans favourite number 1 fan.  Peanut brittle was best I have ever tasted.  I went to heaven for about 10 minutes when I ate it.  You have a special gran.  Thank you so much, RegX"

I agree wholeheartedly.  My "gran" is legendary.

Back to my original story, I went to shake and twisted the night away, literally.  I left at 2 when it was over after 3 hours of dancing.  It was fur-eezing.  Since all the bars were closing, the bus was packed with students dressed in all manner of inappropriate fancy dress.  The Dark Knight seems to be popular, as well as the devil (for girls).  Anyhow, there was an older woman across the aisle from me who had obviously just gotten off work, and she looked very tired.  The bus got so full that it wasn't possible to get off without quite literally pushing your way through a crowd of obnoxious, drunk freshers*.  

The woman managed to get up and started to push her way through (we were luckily at the very front of the bus).  There were a bunch of boys dressed as zombies or something stupid, and they were smashed.  The bus started to move again, and she said, "Wait, I need to get off."  One of the boys says, "I'll bet you do, but I'm not going to help you."  I flagged the bus driver to get him to stop, and the bus jolted everyone forward.  Same idiot boy says, "Get off me you dried up c---!"  I'll let you fill in the blank there because I don't repeat language like that.  

Anyway, maybe that's a term of endearment in England, but I don't care.  You do NOT talk to somebody that way, especially when you are an inebriated teenager talking to a lady whose been working all night.  I waited for someone to say something, but all of his friends just laughed.  Once the doors opened, a couple of his friends had to get off the bus for the woman to get off, and I turned him around and clocked him, right in the nose (with the same finger that wears my mom's ring, strangely, my left hand - I'm right handed).  Unfortunately, I ko'd him, probably more due to his drunkenness than my pugilism.  Also unfortunate, the place where we stopped had a cop on the street, and the bus driver (who hadn't seen the previous incident, only the kid) motions to the cop, who makes me and the now half-conscious teenager and a couple of his friends get off.  Here's our little exchange:

Cop:   What happened?  Who hit him?

Me: I did.

Cop: You?*  Why?

Me: [in my most convincing Southern drawl]  He called this poor woman words that should not be repeated in polite conversation, and his friends were not going to do anything about it, so I did.  I can't stand for that.

Cop: You punched him because he was yelling at her?

Me: No, I clocked him because not only was he disrespectful, he called her [I whisper in his ear what the boy said].  I don't know exactly what the translation of that is in England, but in Atlanta, that is about the ugliest you could say to a lady.

Cop: Well, it means the same thing here.  [to the idiots, as a group, who collectively are about 10% sober]  Did he say that?

Boys: Hm-arudm. He, not, maybe crowded, drunk. Mm-hum-harumph (something akin to how Parliament sounds to me).

Cop: [to idiots] I'm having you arrested for being a nuisance.  [to me]  Here's the next bus, love,  have you got a fare?

Boys: What?  He's the one that was abused!  Why does she get to go?

Cop: Because you're acting like a load of bloody knobs, and she hasn't done any more damage than the booze he's been drinking.

And Scene.  Picture of my slightly bruised hand.

*fancy dress - not, as it turns out, formal attire, it's costume or dress-up

*freshers - the majority of the population it seems like.  Uni students in their first year or all years who are too busy drinking and looking like trollops to have any sense at all.

*I had on, over my cute hair and saddle shoes, a red coat with flowers on the front, and I'm pretty sure the police officer thought I was twelve.