Small Shrill Shriek of Rage

I don't usually post on a Sunday, but having recently complained about being hassled on the dark street by non-Scots, it is only fair that I complain also about being hassled by Scots. Young, male, Edinburgh Scots. Team of two. Both taller than me.

Dear men of the world, just don't touch or talk to women you don't know out on the street after dark, okay? If you don't like what we're wearing, look in another direction. If you feel a need to fight a class war, and you feel tempted to start it with a woman wearing a fancy hat, go join the Communist Party or something. If you need to bully someone, hire a therapist to tell you why.

Obviously no woman who is just minding her own business walking from point A to point B at any time of day or night deserves to be harassed. But I must say I find it particularly annoying to be harassed before seven o'clock at night. Seven o'clock. Sure, at this time of year Edinburgh is pitch-black by five. But this does not give young men license to act like complete and total jerks.

At closing time--okay--the local women can plan for the fact that the jerk quotient goes up exponentially and put our don't-get-harassed-by-jerks plans into action. But it's really unfair to harass women at an hour we can reasonably assume ourselves to be safe from cretins.

The number one thing I detest about life in Edinburgh (and mostly I love life in Edinburgh) is how just wearing a hat makes me a target for the chippy kind of Scotsman who think hat = Margaret Thatcher or, perhaps, woman for whom his mother was a charlady. The class system--which unlike gender really is a semi-imaginary social construct--really gets on my nerves; can you not get over it? It's absolutely ridiculous. Some rugby player with a broken nose actually married one of the Queen's granddaughters. There is no such thing as the class system any more; leave me in peace to wear my vintage clothes as often as I like.

Update: Another shriek. Someone tried to destroy the icon of our Lady of Częstochowa at Jasna Góra today. Fortunately, it is covered with really good safety glass and was undamaged.