Last week, upstairs on a nearly-full bus, I was sitting next to a random woman, and behind two women who were friends, but random strangers to my seatmate and me.
My seatmate had barely grazed my consciousness as we travelled up the hill. As the bus stopped at the traffic lights, a cough emerged from her larynx and immediately and instinctively she put her hand over her mouth. "Nasty cough," I thought, my instincts tending to sympathetic. It's January, there's a lot of it about.
The woman in front of me turned to her friend and, with no attempt to speak quietly, said "Listen to that person coughing. If they didn't smoke they wouldn't cough..."
My eyes and my seatmate's eyes met. She looked mortified; hopefully my slack-jaw, aghast (aka gobsmacked) look conveyed what I thought. Unfortunately, I suddenly realised my stop was looming, so I had to dash; otherwise I might have given the woman in front a piece of my mind.
The previous day I had been walking alongside the office and some woman - not a colleague, I suspected - said loudly "There's an awful lot of scruffy people around these days..." I looked around, expecting to see that groups of grungy youngsters had emerged from the Evangelical Christian Centre, but there were surprisingly few people around, a couple of chaps in reasonably smart if not especially expensive suits, and myself.
I glimpsed my reflection in the mirror as I passed. My reasonably smart suit was hidden under a respectable ankle-length coat. Ankle length because I'm 5'2"; admittedly, with a streak of mud from when a passing vehicle splashed me from a puddle. I couldn't see the problem. My hair was a little wild, there was a wind blowing. But it's been wilder...I concluded the problem must have been my lack of make-up, or my flat shoes - Doc Martens, but very girly Doc Martens - or perhaps my rucksack. but hey, I was going to work...
I then concluded that the problem was in the mind of the speaker, who, perhaps lacked the self-esteem to venture outside without the crutch of high-fashion and make-up.
But you know, I was brought up that you don't make derogatory remarks about people within their earshot. It's just rude. Both the offending women were older than me (looked it anyway) so it can't be blamed on some breakdown in society. And if they hadn't opened their mouths, I would have judged them to be civilised.
