Disneyland Los Angeles December 1999
Went on a flydrive with a mad woman and - as well as her 'losing' her driving licence a couple of weeks before we left, meaning I'd have to do all the driving and therefore me knackered most of the time (which meaning I was "the most boring person in the world", obviously), and once threatening to use her contacts with criminals (she worked a legal secretary) to have my legs broken, or worse, if I even considered leaving her to do her own thing just to have a break form one another, my main purpose on the holiday to be her chauffeur - she smoked like a chimney.

In California, smoking isn't especially welcomed in public places, even in the open air.

There was going to be a big fireworks display that night, so we stood more or less at the back of the area marked out for spectators. She's sparking up cigarette after cigarette and as other people began to file in, locals start doing the whole mock coughing and grumbling routine. One guy in particular, there with his wife and two small children, asked her (fairly politely) to stop smoking. Which she laughed at and ignored, so he said he'd go and get security. She took this really badly, and fumed in a different kind of way for the rest of the night.

As more and more people came, the ensuing crush meant that we ended up right at the back, with the family who'd threatened to tell on her for smoking in a non-smoking area immediately in front of us. I didn't even notice them - I was watching the (very impressive) fireworks. She noticed all right, though. As we walked back to the car, she was laughing hysterically.

When she calmed down enough to tell me what was so funny, she said she'd got her own back on "that bastard". How? She'd spent the whole hour and a half of the fireworks display spitting green smokers' phlegm down the back of his anorak.

You know that expression actors pull in horror films when they realise the fairly anodyne character standing next to or behind them is in fact the deranged killer? Well, that's what my face did. Oddly, when we got back to Blighty, we lost touch.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 9 Jun 2011, 16:01, Reply)