Daphne And The Deadly Chavs. (defrosted and reheated)

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.

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’.

The above picture was taken approximately 15minutes after the terrifying incident. October 2006.