Feeling Flushed!

One of the best thing about being bilingual is that you can always play the ‘Sorry, but I don’t understand’ card.

Today, while walking through the town centre where I live, a lady came bounding up to me with the intention of either getting me to sign something or buy something. I don’t ever do either, when accosted by people in the street.

Normally I would just say "no", and keep on walking, but today I just fancied doing a Gezzy (see previous blogs).

So instead of the short shrift, I reverted to my second language, which is Italian. I smiled sweetly at the woman in question and said, “Mi dispiace, ma…”

But before I could go any further the woman snapped, “Gez Walsh, you were in my class at school, so don’t even think of trying that shit with me!”

The Nemesis (my wife, Carol) who was with me at the time coloured up red and made a bolt for it; I burst out laughing.

The Nemesis asked me later if I wasn’t at all embarrassed. I thought for a while, then realised that I couldn’t remember the last time that I was embarrassed. I seem to have become an embarrass-free-zone. Don’t get me wrong; I cause embarrassment to others on a daily basis, but I don’t seem to get embarrassed.

Lots of people tell me about how they have been embarrassed. My favourite was a female friend of mine who in the nineties went for a day trip to the city of Chester.

While there, busy shopping, she was caught short and need the toilet. She noticed, at the side of the road, an example of what is laughingly called a super toilet. These are the concrete structures built at the side of the road, where you put a coin in the slot and a semi-circular door swings open to reveal a toilet. In the nineties these were quite a new concept.

My friend inserted her coin into the slot on the door and the door swished open with all the modern efficiency it could muster. She entered the toilet at the side of the road pressed the button and again the door swished shut. My friend then did what women do when using a toilet she pulled her knickers and tights down lifted up her skirt and sat on the toilet to do what must be done.

She had no sooner started when to her absolute horror, and without warning, the door, with its usual modern efficiency swung back open, revealing my friend on the toilet with her tights and knickers down and her skirt hoisted aloft.

To make matters worse the toilet had been placed next to a bus stop, and there was now a queue of people who looked quite surprised to be introduced to my friend this way. A little old man smiled a toothless smile and said, “Looks like that door's broken?”

My friend smiled back, hoping that the toilet would be sucked up into some black hole at that moment in time. Before he could say anything else, the door, like the door on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, snapped shut again.

My friend quickly jumped to her feet and reached for the toilet paper and started to use it for the purpose which it had been made, when the door decided that it was now round two, and swung back open again.

There were now even more people at the bus stop, and just in case everyone hadn’t seen what was happening, the old man shouted to his wife, “See I told you, the doors broken!”

My friend was by now stood frozen to the spot like an Egyptian hieroglyph, her skirt hoisted, her under garments on the floor and her hand full of paper resting on her behind. The whole of the bus stop queue started to laugh, as the door swung shut again.

My friend decided that in desperate times you need desperate measures, so she did away with the paper and hoisted up her undergarments just in time for the door to swing open again.

My friend made a run for it, hardly daring to look up. I would have at least taken a bow!

Now, I know it must have been embarrassing for her, but it’s such a good story I decided to put it into the book that I’m writing at the moment, Diva Dave and Fat Sue!