Dear Twatfaced Gits

Dear The Twatfaced Man Being Rude to the Bus Driver At Stanstead Airport,

You ARE the problem.  You swagger up to the unfortunate bus driver trying to get people’s bags onto the Liverpool St coach, you curse, you swear, you demand to know why you can’t just get on without a ticket, you’re told politely to please go speak to a ticket vendor, you give the driver the finger, then slink off to the nearest bench.  There, you sit by the ‘no smoking in this area sign’ and light up your cigarette and mutter, audibly and noticably ‘fuck fuck fuck you fucking fuck’ under your breath, while glaring at the tired, jet-lagged travellers just trying to get home.  And here’s the thing.  You’re Russian.  And all that we get of Russia these days are reports of invasions, the deaths of journalists and nationalist furvour that scares us all.  And there we are, looking at you.  And no, we don’t see just one twat-faced git-wank of a man behaving like a pillock.  I mean, we do, of course we do.  That’s what you are.  But we’re tired, we’re weary, our humanity has been drained by the equally twatfaced gitturd at e-passport control who just shouts at people because he can; and so for a moment we look at you and we say ‘aren’t all Russians horrid?’  And we’re wrong.  And we’re stupid.  And most people are stupid, most of the time, including me.  And you are NOT HELPING.

Dear the Obnoxious British Family On Holiday,

Standing in front of the receptionist who has very politely explained that the sauna is broken and demanding ‘why?  Well yes but why?  Why?  Why?  No, I want to know why.  Do you even understand me?  What do you people think you’re doing?’ while your foul, unruly children run around destroying things and a queue of exhausted travellers builds up behind your wrath, does not do this nation honour.  You have come to someone else’s country.  Sometimes things go wrong.  Please stop your children from eating the furniture, and then politely express your displeasure before moving on.  Because guys: there’s so much to move on to.  You’re in a place you’ve never been before!  There’s a whole nation to explore, culture to meet, language to learn!  Get over the jacuzzi and stop that child from hurting any more ears with her insufferable, pointless screaming.

Dear Writers Who Introduce Themselves With The Words ‘Hi, I’m X, and I’m a bestselling novellist.’

Ah you.  Where would we be without you?  That individual who you meet at a book event or literary party, who’s hand you shake with a cry of ‘hi, so what’s your story?’ only for them to regail you, for ten to twenty minutes, with how they’re the most amazing that that’s ever happened to books and their second book in particular was a bestseller according to the Stepney Tribune and their first book has just been optioned for a movie and it’s going to be immense, it’s going to the best and…

… and look, they’ve just seen someone more interesting than you.

Where would we be without authors who are so absorbed in the desire to be reassured as to their excellence, that they fail to notice that other humans are in the room?

Well.  We’d probably still be at this party.  Eating those crisps, or if you’re lucky those little nibbly things with the bit of cheese on top, maybe some orange juice fingers crossed…

… but without you we’d have far less material to use when trying to explain why writers are very hard work.

Dear Woman Who Do Other Women Down Because They Don’t Conform To A Higher Standard Than Men,

I am one of you.  I will stand and judge a woman who is doing a job with the same average gumption as her male colleague, and I will condemn her, because I have faught most of my career to be taken seriously as a female in a male-dominated industry, and somewhere in all of this I have forgotten that the double-standard we impose upon our society can be imposed both ways.  Not merely: ‘men do better than women’ from one twat-faced end of the world, but also ‘women MUST do better than men’ from the other.  I do this.  I am WRONG.  I am also part of the problem.

Dear Christian Evangelicals Trying To Convert Me,

Because you believe that you are doing something kind, and generous, and good, I won’t actually hit you over the head with the nearest scientific encyclopedia.  Unless you’re from a branch of the church that actively requires its members to donate money to a surprisingly rich pastor, while urging women to stay at home and men not to use condoms; then we might have a paper-brain impact situation.  But regardless, there will probably come a point in our conversation which goes like this:

Evangelical: “What matters is belief in Jesus.”

Me:  “Surely what matters is supporting the weak, the vulnerable, the old, the young, the infirm, the in pain.  What matters is fighting for social justice, being kind and generous to your friends, having an open mind that is willing to change, learning from your mistakes, and embracing the idea that the scientific method is a hugely humble way of assessing the universe, for embedded within it is an acceptance that knowledge is vast, ignorance is an invitation to find out something new, people make mistakes and our senses, thoughts and beliefs are fallible.  This being so perhaps one day God will appear before me and I will happily go ‘wow, I got that wrong, where do I get praying?’ but until then I find it more rewarding to believe in the insignificance of my life on a celestial scale and simultaneously the value of positive action in this life rather than the hypothetical next.”

Evangelical: “But you’re wrong.  Bible says so.  What matters is Jesus.”

At this point, our conversation will become strained.  For to have a conversation that matters, the validity of another person’s position must be contemplated.  If you do not contemplate the validity of that position, you are not honouring the person who states it with the full rights of personhood.  I am happy to honour the conviction of your beliefs and the fact that a lot of the time, these beliefs and this moral code is the core of what leads you to doing incredible acts of kindness and courage to help others within your community.

I would invite you to feel the same way about my world too, and understand that no matter how many times you say ‘the Bible says so’ this will not be a valid argument for me, for I do not see divinity in this text.

Dear People Who Chose Not To Vote,

Please tell me you’re doing something else to participate?

Dear People Who Accuse The Green Party/Corbyn/Bernie Sanders etc. Of Being Naive,

You might be right.

But you’re probably only right because you, I and the vast majority of people are sat here exclaiming “social justice, fairness for all and a society where the imbalance between the poor and the rich is redressed so that we can all live in a good standard of life regardless of where we were born or our gender/sexuality/religion etc. – well of course I believe in that, but it’ll never happen.”

And of course it won’t.  Because while we believe it’ll never happen, we ain’t never gonna do shit about it.  And so we fulfil our own prophecy, and nothing changes, except maybe that the rich get a little bit richer, because they know, and believe, that they can.