How times have changed.

Gone have the days where I could fearlessly shout random things at 'chavs'.

It was Summer 2006, and a group of us were walking through Loughborough's Queens Park. Upon leaving the park, we were met by a large group of 'chavs'. These were know at the time as 'Chavalanches'. As these forms of humans do, they took it upon themselves to say something rather vulgar towards our group of people. Quick as a flash, taken from a short film by David Firth, I retorted at the top of my lungs 'Who are youuu?'. This seemingly innocent and irrelevant question knocked the chavalanch off their feet, they literally did not know what to say or do. They were left completely disarmed.

From this experience I continued this habit of responding to abuse from these pikeys with irrelevant and completely random phrases. For instance I asked a group of charming young youths who had just told me to get my hair cut 'Why is the sky green?'. This method continued working.

However over the years I have grown up, and so have they - to be bigger, stronger and generally more intimidating. The abuse generally subsided, and therefore the random spikes of conversation did too. After my friend Guy was beaten up, as the group of chavs had seen past his confusing lexicon, we decided enough was enough.

So for the first time in quite a while, last night the old habit came back up and literally exploded from my mouth - bad idea.

As we were crossing a side road, a car sped into it off the main road, no indication, cutting the corner and nearly knocking us flat. Without a second thought, or even a first one for that matter, the habit came back. I could feel it ripping through my body, a mixture of desperately wanting to confuse a chav for just one last time, but this time it was mixed with fury. These kind of drivers, the ones with souped up cars, exhausts the size of cannons, music loud enough to be heard several miles away and measure 7.2 on the richter scale as they drive past are the ones that make our car insurance so expensive. The drink drivers, and wreckless, the plain stupid.

So just like the guys broken exhaust, the word roared from me: 'PRICK!'

It could have been worse I guess, there are many far far worse words I could have chosen, but prick was the first one hat came to mind.

Everything went slow mo. I could hear the screeching of the tyres, I could smell the burning of the rubber, and I could feel an immediate and potent regret, followed by extreme adrenaline.

I ran. If I'd ran like that at sports days in the past, I may never have been bullied for being crap. The problem was, he was in a car.. and I wasn't. I needed to get off the road and way, so i took the first side road I could and scrambled over someones fence, over another, and another and finally found a suitable bush at the side of a quiet road. I lay there, listening intently, I could hear the rumble of this engine driving around furiously looking for me. It eventually faded, and I was rescued by Ben in his car after a panicky phone call.

So there we are - a brilliant life lesson. I intend not to shout abuse at these people, even if they do have the mental capacity of a clothes peg.

A somewhat cinematic version of the story, but there it is.

Flan x