Digital indignity

Maureen Lipman:

On the drive home to London, we decided to eat at a hotel by the Humber bridge in honour of mum, who always loved seeing it from the window of her beloved flat. It was a mistake. The place was amok with running kids with running noses and, as we left, a gaggle of rough lads at a table near the window seemed to be discussing us. "Yeah, they're Jews aren't they?" one of them said.

I stopped at their table. My daughter's grip on my arm tightened. Like her dad before her, she would have walked on; like her dad, she knew that I couldn't: she feared for my as yet unbroken nose.

"Yes?" I asked him. "Is that the end of the sentence, or do you have anything to add?"

He shuffled about a bit and said, "Yer what?"

I said: "Do you have anything to add to your assessment?"

"No ... I was just sayin' you're ... Jews ... that's all."

His mate stepped in. "He's drunk."

"No I aren't!" protested the alleged drunk.

"Well," I said, "since he's got nothing more to add, I'll just take it as a compliment shall I?"

And we swep'out, as they say up here.

My daughter was, at once, relieved and impressed: "Well done Mod," she breathed, "you did that with a lot of dignity." Sadly, the saying of the line coincided precisely with my giving the young man a hearty finger as we passed the window.

"Ah," said Amy, "yes, well that certainly blew the dignity side of things."