I was in the queue for the Ladies last night, after the concert had finished (so, no time pressure when the announcements tell you creatively that this evening's performance is due to strat in two minutes...).
There was a woman behind me who, when we were out in the corridor pushed into me. I didn't analyse the situation carefully, choosing to treat it as accidental, even though, really, I knew she was jostling for some sort of pointless advantage.
When it came for my turn to stand in the doorway, I stood back, leaving a gap between me and the woman in front. This was because one of the double-doors was locked shut I had tried, and failed, to open it two hours earlier, to the benign amusement of those waiting to go in), and people were struggling to get out past someone stood in the doorway. It made absolutely no sense to me to impede people trying to get out. But the woman behind me tried to shove me forward to force me to arse-fuck the woman in front of me. I didn't say anything, because just as her shoving me wouldn't get her to her piss any more quickly, me challenging her wouldn't relieve me sooner.
The woman in front of me got a cubicle, so it was almost my turn, and my responsibility to keep an eye for a cubicle becoming available. Just as I saw the door of the furthest-but-one cubicle open I also spotted a slightly arthritic woman trying to walk past a rather corpulent woman at the handbasin. I quickly considered my two options - wait a moment, or elbow arthritic woman out of the way, bum-shoving the fat lady into the handbasin. I chose to wait, just a moment. I was shoved in the back and propelled down the way, almost colliding into Arthritic Woman. When I reached the vacating cubicle, I had to wait until the previous occupier had moved out of the way. Well, I suppose I could have impeded her exit. Someone did that to me once. I figured that my need to wash my hands was less than her need to pee. She soon moved.
After I had peed, I went to wash my hands and spotted my assailant come out of her cubicle. So I went over to her and asked whether it was common sense she lacked, or manners, or both. Aggressively, she didn't know what I was saying, so I coolly explained how she had pushed me three times whilst queueing. She denied it - she was standing behind me. I repeated the facts (as I saw them), emphasising why I had left the gap, and why I had waited for the slightly infirm woman to come out. Again she denied it..."It was my bumbag!" she exclaimed triumphantly, finishing with you "I was just stood behind you...you COW. This conversation spilled out onto the corridor outside, I repeated that she had assaulted me, she repeated that it was her bumbag (as Jimmy remarked afterwards, if one of us had tried to touch the bumbag, suddenly, it would have been her's and, rightly, we would have been arrested for theft. But the fact that it's trying to fuck me up the arse somehow makes it a free agent). She was lying, anyway, in my heels she was actually shorter than me, (and twice as wide) and there is no way that her bumbag could have thumped me in the middle of the back.
I was really angry, but in a parallel way I was also sort of amused, because she kept repeating "I didn't assault you, it was my bumbag." She walked off in a huff, and some old fart waiting outside, presumably for his wife, was going "Sssh sssh," so I walked up and said "No, I won't ssshh. I was assaulted three times by that woman, and I don't come to the Albert Hall to be assaulted by some fucking American lowlife lying bloody scum who then calls me a cow." He didn't know what had happened - I'm sure if it was his wife who was assaulted, or whom I was expected to trample over to get the cubicle, he might have taken a slightly different view. I know a lot of people would just ignore it, not wanting a fuss, or fearing an even more serious assault from an obvious bully. And just because I suffered no injury nor lasting soreness doesn't make it not an assault.
Jimmy was waiting outside nearly fifteen minutes for me. As he stood there, another pair of Americans came out; the woman exclaiming loudly "Gee, gotta get a cab, in this city at this time...". Dozens of people turned and glared at them. If you can't cope with the maurauding Gangs of Middle-aged Middle-class Middle-England Prommers lawlessly roaming the anarchic streets of Kensington at nine o'clock on a summer's Saturday evening, rearrange the following words...Off Fuck.
