A year or so ago I was asked by a friend to write a story for his blog. I recently saw my old housemate and while reminiscing about the good old days of too much afternoon champagne and not much sensibility (lets pretend any of this has changed...) it dawned on me that I haven't shared it on this Blog.
So, voila reheated and ready for you, my first ever encounter with British criminals.
So, voila reheated and ready for you, my first ever encounter with British criminals.
DAPHNE AND THE DEADLY CHAV.
Most people who don’t know me, try to place
my accent. American? Irish? Do I hear… Liverpool? No, no you don’t, get your
ears cleaned and never talk to me again. My accent is a hybrid actually, I had
an Australian teacher, a love for American TV, British music idols, many
English friends and a Greek family and upbringing. Before we start with my story, let me clarify this, I now
understand the British culture, I have adapted. I can’t stop myself from saying
please and thank you like my life depends on it (and while it’s all the
rage here, in Greece waiters think I have OCD), I put milk in my tea and I
almost accept that the one and only thing y’all eat EVERYTIME there’s any sort
of an occasion is a roast dinner.
Rewind six years, however, and none of this
made sense to me. My accent was as Greek as it gets, my skin had a hint of the
Mediterranean (as in tanned not hairy, thank you very much) and my knowledge of
all things British could be entirely summarized in the sentence: ‘you like fish
and chips and to get drrrrrrrrrunk, no?’. Adding insult to injury, I lived in
the tiny posh slash chavtastic slash brilliant town (or maybe city because of
some cathedral rule?) of Winchester in a house of four and a half residents,
three and a half of which had not socialized with many foreign people before.
One housemate actually, although good natured, never quite grasped that I was
human. She referred to me as ‘The Greek’, described me to others as ‘a Greek’
and pretty much pictured me as a cat with a Greek flag print on my fur. When,
in the summer, she came to Greece (to make sure it wasn’t an imaginary country,
perhaps) she literally ate exclusively chips and bread for two whole weeks. She
then died of constipation. No, sorry, she didn’t, that was a terrible joke.
The story I was asked to tell is about Chavs. As I mentioned, Winchester
can be quite chavy, especially the parts of it students can afford to chill at.
And what to you looks like a chav, to the untrained Greek eye is just a guy who
must go to the gym a lot and is in dire need of a dental hygiene lecture and a
shampoo bottle. So, when my half a housemate, Will, came into our house terrified
one evening because ‘chavs’ had bullied him, I was baffled to say the least.
Will looked at me like the ignorant token foreigner I was. ‘Do you not know
about Chavs?’ ‘No’ I said, semi-ashamed. At this point, Hayley butted into our
conversation ‘they’re the people with the traksuits and the big earrings’. Oh
yeah, I had seen them. ‘They are horrible’ Will and Hayley chanted in unison
(not really, but it would have been entertaining). They looked at me in the
eyes and laid the horrific facts out. ‘They will shout things at you’. ‘Never
look at them’. ‘Especially not if they
talk to you’. ‘And never EVER talk back to them’. ‘ESPECIALLY with your
accent’. ‘They steal and spit’. ‘They killed a man outside Tescos the other day
because he told them to be quiet’. It suddenly all made sense… they don’t go to
the gym a lot, they wear tracksuits to run faster and the rotten teeth are from
all the spitting and OH MY GOD their hair is dirty because they don’t have time
to wash it in between murders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fast forward two chav induced nightmare
filled days, Hayley offers to give me a lift to the one stop. The little drive
goes smoothly. We listen to two verses of a song and the beginning of a bad
Fearne Cotton joke and we’re there. The glorious one stop. I get out of the
car, unaware of what is to come. Take two steps. Then I see them. Trainers,
tracksuits, bad teeth, bulldog, shit hair. My internal monologue goes into
overdrive. ‘don’t look at them, don’t look at them, not with your accent, not
with your accent, wait… they can’t SEE my accent, shhhh just don’t look, just
do…’ ‘MISS?! MISS?!’ I hear a voice through two brown broken teeth. ‘shit,
shit, shit, SHIT, I’m going to be the man at tescos’. Despite trying not to, I
look up. They are actually talking to me. I can see the headlines ‘Chavs murder
foreign girl after she rolled her ‘r’s at them’. They look as threatening as I
expected. Short, angry. I turn around and look at Hayley with terror! Hayley is
unphazed, she probably hasn’t noticed THE CHAVS, I think. I run towards the car
keeping my composure. They talk to me again ‘Miss, Miss will you...’ That’s it,
their voices trigger my street wise defense mechanism, unable to control it, a
scream escapes my vocal chords ‘CRIMINALS!! THE CRIMINALS SPOKE TO
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’. I get in the car shaking. Hayley looks at me like
blankly. I expect her to share my panic
and drive away in full speed. Instead, she takes a moment to realize what has
just happened and wets herself ‘you absolute moron!! They are eight year old
kids in tracksuits, walking their dog’.
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| The above picture was taken approximately 15minutes after the terrifying incident. October 2006. |
