A Hard Experience

I am usually rather upbeat here in my own little corner of blogland, but something bad happened last night and I have to mention it because it made it hard to sleep last night or early this morning, when we finally got home from the concert. And I have also posted a happier entry about the Madonna concert, because she was just amazing last night.

I am always hesitant about writing about too much negativity here, because I don’t want to be accused of criticizing things here in Britain, as one who was not born here. But what happened to me shouldn’t happen to anyone and so it’s not an America versus Great Britain thing. It’s a human being thing. Usually here on my blog, I refer to my husband as “Brit Boy”, but we had a serious run-in and so for this post, he will be as always, my husband. (smile)

We had left the concert and we were headed to catch our coach back to Wiltshire. It was late, but we were walking along with thousands of others leaving the concert venue in Cardiff. It was nice to just be walking along with my husband, holding hands and enjoying the night. We walked along in peace for a while and then the crowd thinned out a bit as people fanned out on their own routes home. Our coach/bus was waiting in a park near the venue, so we had to walk along a lighted path along the river with dozens of others to get back there.

So we traveled along, minding our own business, walking along at a pretty good pace so we wouldn’t get left behind, but not running at all. We were just enjoying being together. These three guys passed by us and then their two other friends acted like idiots. The first of the two came up right in front of me and raise up and mimicked as if he were going to jump on me and hit me and then the coward walked on past us. Then the second one stopped dead in front of me and did this weird wiggly thing at me like he was thinking he was a ghost or something, put his hand in my face, and made a noise at me and trotted along to catch his friends as they all laughed. My husband called the first one a “suitable name” that I won’t repeat here. Then as the second one passed, I called him “yet another colorful word”.

Now anyone who knows me, knows that I am a peaceful person and so is my husband. And I hate to even write about us having to deal with people like this, but sometimes you can just get tired of the craziness. Those losers kept trotting and laughing over how “clever” they thought they were. And my husband and I just kept walking in the other direction, but I must admit, we were angry. I guess that we should have been a bit relieved, because we hear a lot about knife crime and how people who are minding their own business and living their lives are stabbed by losers on the street terrorizing others. The thing is, these guys didn’t look like some roving teenaged gang, they were dressed neatly like they were having a night out. This made it all the more disturbing to me. These were “normal” looking guys, but they acted like brutes.

I will say here, that I didn’t shed a tear, but it enraged me that I as a woman, as a human being, can’t walk along a path with my husband and many others and be spared this kind of assault or worse. And we are so glad that it didn’t turn out much worse. I’m sure there will be those who say, well be glad that you weren’t knifed or killed…we know that and I thank God. But still, it just angers me that there isn’t more respect out there. I don’t think that this is too much to ask. I am not talking about an idealized world. I do believe that most people are decent, but they are drowned out by the people who cause the strife.