George's Bad Day

The differences between shouting in order to make yourself heard, and turning round and bellowing at a total stranger were explained to George far more calmly than they were received. Lost in a strange city far from home and trying desperately to get back to his hotel room, his irritated and fractious mannerisms had caught the eye of a kind and helpful stranger who had walked up and offered his aid. In his defence (which he clung to vociferously) George had gone several hours without food, and a low blood sugar level has never complemented his mood. However, the unavoidably fact remained that George had rounded on the poor man and screamed his destination with such unexpected venom and fury that the stranger had, wide-eyed with fear, pointed desperately at the first thing that had caught his adrenaline dilated eyes. Following the man's instructions, George had walked for twenty minutes before realising he had been traveling in the wrong direction and now he sat dejectedly spreading whipped butter onto his toast, and sipping with almost tangible loathing the cup of tea that room service had prepared for him.

"The yankee bastards didn't even take the bag out," He declared viciously "They have no idea, do they? The locals can't even navigate their own goddamned cities...Twenty minutes!" He tapped fixedly on his watch-face for emphasis "Twenty minutes I marched in the baking heat off the back of that swine's directions, Christ! I was halfway to Harlem before I even realised. I should have known we were staying South of the Guggenheim. In the end I got a taxi back, and the driver wasn't much better than the fool who'd sent me up there in the first place. His turban was wrapped so thick around his ears he couldn't hear a word I was saying, and even when he'd finally managed to he couldn't understand - English must have been his fifth language. I tried writing down the address and showing him the piece of paper, for all the good it did. He reads English about as well as I speak Afrikaans, and after this he has the cheek to ask if I know where it is on the map. Must have been the only complete phrase of the Queen's English the twit can summon up. I told him if I knew that I'd have been there a good couple of hours ago with a pot of strong tea and hot buttered toast," he stared menacingly at the shambles that lay on the table before him, "I see now that perhaps that may have been a stretch too far," he paused, taking a bite into the cold, soft toast and a sip from his tea cup, finishing with a look suggesting that what he'd just consumed had been befouled by the bell-boy that had brought it up. Following the treatment George had given him when he tried to order it, it would not have been altogether surprising if the poor, abused lad had taken the daring initiative to do so. "In the end," George continued "I got out of the taxi, throwing every insult at the driver I could conceive - a gesture that was repaid in kind, I might add - and got in another one. He wasn't much better either, but at least he didn't have a turban. He understood me after some struggle, but there was no way in hell he took me there on the fastest route. Little bastard must have driven me halfway round the city before we finally got here, the filching little toad, trying to double my fare," He took a small bite out of the toast before flinging it hatefully across the room, where it stuck butter side down to the wall and slid slowly to the floor. "And the berk didn't even take me round the scenic route, oh no. I MEAN REALLY!" He slammed his fist on the table, waved his arms in the air, and performed several other little maneuvers with his hands. " To fleece a man is bad enough, but why can't he make my time a little bit more enjoyable while he does it? The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Times Square - was I treated to but one of these historic landmarks? Of course not. I was allowed to gaze out onto the darkest and most disgusting backwaters this city has to offer," enraged now to an extraordinary degree, he had left his chair and began throwing himself around the room, his hand gestures continued and had become ever cruder and more impassionately executed. He raised his voice yet higher "There are parts of Chinatown that should be closed down, cordoned off, evacuated and leveled! The FILTH I saw!! You have no idea what passes for hygiene down there! I saw one man throw an open, seeping bag of God alone knows what onto the street and leave it there! And I checked," he waved a finger authoritatively in the air "the bins don't get collected in that part of town for four more days,"