There’s something rather touching about a week in which everybody is encouraged to have their say. We call it democracy, though increasingly it resembles a family Christmas, people storming off in a huff, someone crying near the Quality Street, and at least one elderly relative muttering that things were better before Brussels invented bananas.
Still, the principle matters. The important thing is not whether we agree with what people say, but that they get to say it. We have, after all, survived Brexit, the longer passport queues, the vanishing ease of working in Europe, and the curious national achievement of making a weekend in Spain feel administratively similar to invading Poland. But by God, we protected this sceptred isle. Or at least put it behind a velvet rope and made everybody queue for it.
And that’s democracy. You vote, you earn the right to complain. If you didn’t vote, frankly, you should sit quietly and eat your fish fingers. That’s the deal.
What struck me, though, was how desperate people are to be heard, even outside polling stations and televised debates. Sometimes the human urge to express oneself erupts in the least likely settings. Not Parliament. Not Question Time. But Sainsbury’s car park in Whitechapel.
Brayden and I had timed our shopping beautifully. There is a brief golden hour between five and six when the supermarket empties itself of humanity. The shelves look mildly traumatised, but navigable. We swept round in under twenty minutes with the smug efficiency of contestants on Supermarket Sweep who’d both once worked in theatre.
The shop itself was deserted. The car park, however, was Bedlam.
Anyone who has driven in East London will know that motorists there treat lane markings as philosophical suggestions rather than instructions. The exit from the car park narrows from two lanes into one before opening again towards the road, a piece of traffic design seemingly intended to test marriages.
A small car ahead of us was dithering magnificently. Half in one lane, half in another, unable to commit itself to any recognisable future. Brayden, quite reasonably, moved round to the right and pulled ahead into the correct turning lane.
At which point a woman of determined maturity, practical shoes, and the sort of expression usually associated with parish council disputes, strode across the road towards us.
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Before either of us could process what was happening, she leaned into the open window and announced, with astonishing confidence:
“Well, look at you with your fancy driving. If you’re as impatient in bed, I feel sorry for your girlfriend.”
Now, there are moments in life where several thoughts arrive simultaneously. The first was shock. The second was delight. The third, because Brayden’s hand happened at that exact moment to be resting lightly on my leg, was irresistible.
“Actually,” I said, “I’m his girlfriend.”
But she had already marched away, unwilling to allow facts to interrupt a speech she had clearly been rehearsing internally since at least 1987.
Brayden shouted something after her, firm but Canadian, which is to say it probably sounded apologetic even while objecting. Meanwhile, we dissolved into helpless laughter.
What fascinated me most was not the insult itself, but the extraordinary leap of assumption behind it. One glimpse through a car window and she had constructed an entire heterosexual relationship, complete with disappointed woman waiting at home for underwhelming intimacy.
It was sociology in sensible footwear.
And yet, somewhere underneath the absurdity, I felt oddly sorry for her. Because anger like that rarely arrives fresh. It tends to come from loneliness, boredom, disappointment, or simply a day in which nobody has spoken to you at all. Perhaps we were the only people she interacted with yesterday. Perhaps she got home and thought, with satisfaction, Well, I told them.
There are worse things than wanting your voice heard. Even in a Sainsbury’s car park.
Though ideally not with your head through someone else’s window.
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