The Scarlet Pimpernel

I was talking to a guy at work about embarrassing incidents the other day. This is something I seem to be quite good at. I know it might seem hard to believe, but I do tend to get myself into more than my fair share of cringy moments, although one that came to mind deserves writing about.

It was a Christmas shopping trip with Mandy a year or two ago, I'm not fond of Christmas shopping really but being bored always brings out the silly side of me, mostly because you have to dress up warm and fight the large crowds. After a drudge around Nottingham centre we found ourselves in WHSmiths in another large queue to pay, my boredom levels were eating away at me. As we got near to the counter there was a large pile of clearance books there and one was 'The Scarlet Pimpernel'. This got me thinking that I could be like that, a secret hero rescuing poor people from the Guillotine, especially as I had my big long coat on that day... It just worked, it was like a sign from above, everything was clear to me, I was a modern day Scarlet Pimpernel. Although I was well aware having the coat alone wasn't going to convince many people, I needed to prove the point if I was to be a true Pimpernel. So I pulled my coat up over the bottom half of my face so you could just see my eyes and whispered almost under my breath as I started to turn around to Mandy "I am..." then flung my long coat open dramatically and held my hands up in the air in an 'overacting back and white movie' kind of way, nearly shouting "The... SCARLET PIMPERNEL!!!", looking very confident and proud of myself. If I'd have slapped my thigh it would have polished the moment of perfectly. I looked down to check out how impressed Mandy was with my new alter ego, but it seems she chose a few moments before that to go and check out some book called something like 'Chicks are great, all guys are arseholes', I may have paraphrased a little. In the space where I expected to find her was a poor young whimpering bloke who looked like I'd just told him I was Jesus. I really didn't want to lose face at this moment, I was a courageous hero! So I looked him square in the eye and gave him a reassuring wink, just so he knew I meant business.

I'm spending some time trying to remember other times when I've completely humiliated myself in public, it may take a while to compile. Right I'm off to do some shopping... Woo ha ha ha.