A brief tale of Londoners being quintessentially London to each other

Last night I was riding my bike along and stopped at some traffic lights which were experiencing reasonably heavy traffic. On the pavement were two girls, maybe 10 years old, mucking around on a billycart. One of the girls was on the billy cart, which was starting to roll backwards so that the rear wheels of cart were going onto the road. The other girl was standing up holding on to the reigns of the cart, doing that delightful thing people do for shits and giggles some times– pretending they are going to allow friends to die in heavy traffic. The girl on the cart was obviously pretty concerned by the whole affair, but really it was just kids being kids.

Enter 20 something year old male, walking past, typing a message into his mobile phone who offers the following helpful advice to the girl in the cart:

"Wha' the fuck are you thinkin'?"

Inspired by said helpful advice girl in billycart's look of total fear disappears momentarily and is replaced with look of scorn and hatred and responds:

"shu'up!"

Following which the look of fear returns as she goes back to convincing her friend not to kill her.

Ah… London.