Louis Walsh,
gun running, rampant capitalism, human cloning, political correctness, Lycra leggings on fat people, the blame culture, moral turpitude, pre-grated carrot, child abuse, hate, intolerance,
Louis Walsh...
the list goes on. Human beings are simply pre-programmed to be a bit shitty. Or, of course, a lot shitty, depending on whether they are working or middle class.
Shitty working class people can NEVER be a lot shitty because they are the unfortunate consequence of not having two holidays a week and an au pair. Shitty middle class people, everybody knows, are ALWAYS a lot shitty because they have had the education to know that killing and stuff is WRONG, so deserve everything they get.
So beneath the faecal morass that makes up the bulk of human nature, it's always a pleasure to catch a glimmer of the sunken treasure beneath, and I have two little tales to tell that can do nothing other than cockle warm.
We start with last Friday, and Bridge Street car park in Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Now, parking is always at a premium in Berwick-Upon-Tweed — the successful outcome of a town council initatiave which actively encourages shoppers to stay away so that small businesses can fold in peace — and a friend of mine was feeling inordinately smug at squeezing into a narrow space by a wall.
She felt less smug on return from her hair appointment and discovering that she couldn't get out. It didn't matter which way she turned the steering wheel, there was no way her car was coming out of that space short of a vehicular episiotomy.
What is a girl to do? More to the point, what is a modern, liberated girl to do? Easy. She takes her hard-won liberation and marches over to the Granary building site where she figures there will be at least TEN men capable of flinging four tonne diggers around unfeasibly small spaces. A Nissan X-Trail, so her thinking went, will be a dribble of wee-wee.
Was it the Women's Lib Movement imbuing her with the confidence to commit such an heroic act of post-modern feminism? Or was it quite simply the fact that she'd had her hair done.
To her delighted surprise, her request was not met with sniggers, raised eyebrows or indulgent smiles. Instead, she was offered perfectly charming assistance and the type of rescue that would not have looked out of place at Camelot. With the car birthed safely, my friend confided in me that she simpered at her hi-vis saviour. SIMPERED! Something she hasn't done since catching Bill Bailey's eye on his Tinselworm tour, like, a whole year ago.
My second tale of chivalry takes place in Morrisons. Yep. More accustomed to acts of shoplifting than acts of chivalry, this rich man's Lidl has given rise to a modern knight. Basically, I'd left my bags in the car and I had loads of shopping and couldn't afford to replace the bags and how was I going to get home and the Swedish Glace was thawing and ...
"Whoa, chill. Go and get them."
"Really? I don't want to hold anyone up."
"You need bags. Go. Don't rush. S'all sweet."
My brushes were placed back on the Scalextric track of Saturday morning shopping by this calm oasis of oxymoronic hormonal youth. I learnt, as we happily packed together, that he is teaching himself Japanese for fun, is going to live on a farm in Japan for a few months, he writes music, can't understand why men and women can't be friends, and wants not just to be a teacher but the "best teacher, like, EVER in the entire WORLD!"
Surely, this is what being human is all about. Not shitty at all.
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