2nd rant this week

I got back from the supermarket about half four today. It was nearly dark. I'd had lunch with my pal, we'd had a few laughs and even the madness that is Sainsbury's Darnley hadn't managed to dent my good mood. When I pulled up at my back door, I realised there was a car parked there. It was a soft-top and the top was down. The driver seemed to be youngish and was wearing a hoodie over a baseball cap. Beats me: why have the top down and then admit you're frozen and put on not one but two hats?

His car radio was blasting out something - you know, the doof-doof-doofa-doof-doof-noise you quite often hear from the cars of total eejits at the traffic lights. If there were words to this music, I couldn't have made them out over the base. I started taking the groceries in. The driver carried on nodding like the dog in the insurance advert on the telly in time to the music. I took in two loads of groceries and went to put the car in the lock-up 50 yards away.

As I returned to the back door, there was a pause in the music and then it started up again - if anything even louder. That's when I cracked. I went over to the car.

- Turn it off! I said.
- Whit? said the young man. Maybe wearing two hats was making him deaf.
- Turn. the. music. off!
- How? (You can tell he's a Glaswegian, can't you?)
- Because I want to talk to you.

He turned the music off and looked at me, frowning.

- What are you doing here? I asked.
- Whit?
I said it again.
- Um waitin fur sumdy, he said.
- Do you know this is a private car park? I asked.
- Whit?
- No lights, no road markings, said I. Private car park.

 And then he said it. The word that drives teachers - probably all adults - insane:

- So?

I've never been so tempted to land somebody with my big, heavy handbag. There was nobody around. It was nearly dark. I would have got away with it. I actually took a step towards him and he realised he'd gone too far because he flinched.

At that moment one of my neighbours appeared.

- Hi, she said brightly, This is my grandson. We're going to a family do and he offered to pick me up.

- Lovely, said I.

What a coward I am. I could have said: Tell your grandson to grow up. Tell him we don't all share his taste in 'music'. Tell him to put the top up on the car before you freeze to death. But no, I said nowt. Just smiled and said:

- Have a good night.

My Govan granny would be horrified. I can just hear her. She was normally a quiet woman who used a cluck of the tongue the way other women used a thousand words. She wouldn't have said: Have a good night. She would probably have started with: Get you tae f... oot o here. But then I doubt if she'd ever seen a convertible driven by an 18 year old wearing two hats, far less a convertible that was picking up his 85 year old granny.

Autres temps, autres moeurs.