Directing

She leant right in to my face – RIGHT IN TO MY FACE – and mouthed a question and gestured at me. I removed my earbuds.

Begrudgingly, I did.

‘Excuse me’, said Irritating Valley Girl #1, ‘Can you tell me where to get off for the train station in London?’

Now some folk might say that my response ‘There are about 26 main line train stations in London, which one do you want?’ wasn’t entirely helpful but I’d reached my limit of their brainless chatter within 28.7 seconds and had already resorted to the iPod’s earbuds as a place of refuge.

Predictably, Valley Girl #1 turned to Valley Girl #2 with open-mouthed amazement that London might have more than one train station. There then followed a discussion between them while they tried to recall the name of the station they needed. And they failed in their combined attempt to remember.

I was about to plug my ears again when Valley Girl #2 said to me, ‘We’re trying to get to Paris’.

I may have had a thought along the lines of ‘With the amount of planning you’ve shown so far – good luck!’ but instead I did a quick whirl through the cobwebs in my head and responded, ‘Paris… that’s St Pancras?’

‘Yeah, that’s the one!’ said Valley Girl #2

I thought about it for a moment then factored in the swell of the rush hour on the public transport system they’d be lugging those three cases through and offered them, ‘I guess your best plan would be to get off at Marble Arch and get the underground to St Pancras.’ And jammed my earbuds back in. And increased the volume of The Killers from Loud to OMG!

To no effect; there was more leaning in to my face, more gesturing and a massively exaggerated mouthing of a question as I were stupid. I pulled the plugs and said ‘Pardon?’

‘Does the driver announce where we get off?’

‘Yep,’ I retorted and The Killers instantly sealed me back in to my lovely Valley Girl-less world.

For the record, I have nothing against pretty, blonde 20-something Californian girls. But when any two people spread themselves out and occupy four seats and a table, my hackles begin to rise and my defences go to DefCon 3.

But when they talk in loud voices that instantly make it obvious to anyone with two braincells to rub together that the people in question are, in actual fact, terminally stupid and have neither an idea of where they’re going, nor which routes they’re going to take to get there… well, that’s about when I stop caring.