The Green Cardigan Wearer and the Professor: a Story of Hope

What a bloody day. It was good to be home, to see the wife waiting for me, concerned that i was so upset. Ministered to with a nice drink, we snuggled and settled down, as she waited for me to explain what had gone so wrong with my day.

"It started", I said, " with those new neighbours - you know the ones? They moved in a couple of months ago to the old Raddick place? Seemed like such a nice young set of people, didn't they?

My wife agreed, saying how pleasant the two men were, although she hadn't spoken to the woman yet.

"Well", I responded, "today she showed her true colours. We were at the tram stop, ready to get on, when she turns up ... wearing a green cardigan! Can you believe that? A filthy, disgusting, green cardigan!"

My wife was clearly shocked at this, and leaned back to sip and come to terms with this obscenity. She asked what had happened.

"Well, what do you think, my love? We couldn't let that obscenity ... exist! So, a few of us, a few of us decent folk, we got her off the bus, and asked her what the hell she thought he was doing - and she played dumb!"

I shook my head to think of it, to remember it now. She had looked shocked, terrified - and she had to be pretending that she didn't know what the problem was. Eventually, an elderly, distinguished looking gent had ordered her "Take it off!", and she had said "What? Tale what off?"

Was she trying to get us to utter the name of the filthy creation?

Naturally, I told my wife, we took the thing off her. We had to knock her to the ground and fight her, but eventually we got the evil, filthy, disgusting thing off her. The tram had turned up by this time, and the driver had come over to see what the commotion was - they have to, I explained to my wife, check on anything untoward, in case a passenger was being attacked. That was obviously not happening here though, and, in fact, when the driver saw what was happening, he said he had just the thing for that, went off, and came back with a oil burner - long thing it was, said it was for heating parts they couldn't get to. Anyway, I explained, it made short shrift of that filthy thing.

"An you know what? After we had, well, really saved her from that, she cried - and it wasn't tears of joy, like any decent person, oh no no no: it was tears like she was sad! Said the evil thing had belonged to her grandmother - can you think of a grandmother having such an evil thing in her possession? Anyway, one of the other passengers said if the grandmother was still alive he would make darn sure she wasn't able to pass her evil filth on to any others - and especially not any children, but the stupid woman just blubbered and howled even more, the ungrateful wretch, and said her grandmother had passed away."

I took another swig, and though of the next part of this morning's drama, where the driver had had to threaten the woman with calling the police and having her committed as criminally insane, unless she got on the tram. She'd run off then, the stupid woman, so the driver had made his call.

I had thought that would be it, but no, there was this other woman on the tram, a history professor, looked all academic, and this, I said to my wife, was where it started getting really, really, weirder and sicker.

This ... professor had started off getting stuck into us - us! Decent, respectable people protecting everyone against that horrible filth! She'd said What do you lot get from this? What do you get off by doing this?

At first we'd all been a bit shocked, like, and took her as being a bit simple, so some spoke soft to her, saying things like well, you saw what she was ... was ... wearing, didn't you - we had to take it off her. And then this .. aca-bloody-emic woman had started laying into us - only she did it slowly, and sounded reasonable, and it wasn't until I got off the tram and was at work that I realised what she was doing.

She asked us what was wrong with green cardigans, and. of course, everyone just grows up knowing that they're evil, despicable, filthy things. Trying to describe it's like trying to describe the wind!

I shook my head, and continued telling my wife about these terrible things.

Anyway, I said, we didn't bother giving her the time of the day, just shared a few knowing looks between us. But she wouldn't effing well stop. A young couple got on the bus, ordinary looking people I thought, when this woman starts carrying on - only nicely, like, saying that, what was it? Oh yeah - hundreds of years ago, they would have been treated just as that bloody green ... cardigan wearer was - I'm sorry to mention that filth so much love. But anyway, she was carrying on about this couple, saying do you know why they would have been bashed or killed? - and I can tell you, the couple were starting to look quite nervous, and some of us were thinking do we have to do something here, like, is this nutcase gonna go troppo, or what?

Anyway, just as we start moving towards her, she tells us. Apparently, back in these olden days she was talking about, people would persecute others just because this couple were both male. I mean, as if! Can you imagine it? This bloody trollop carrying on as if that meant anything!

She said no-one was allowed to have more than one partner, so they all did something called "having affairs". , which didn't seem to make any sense the way she explained it, 'cos it was just like they were having relationships, but somehow they weren't. I shook my head, and finished sadly, not a lot of what she said, my wonderful one, made much sense.

But it gets better my lovely, and you're going to have to brace yourself for this. She said that also applied to couples who were both women - just like you and I, me darlin', just like us,

What a load of crock!

Anyway, at this stage the tram driver had had enough, and he told her to stop her rubbish, or she would be thrown off the bus.

But you know, this is where it gets weirder again, 'cos she just looks right at him, and says, are you from the Eastern Federation, then, My Green Eyes?, and he just shuts up, sits down, and don't say nothin' - not until I was getting off the tram, love.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. She says, this woman, standing up now, and looking each of us in the eye, she says, do you know what the Eastern Federation hates - hates just as much as you hate green cardigans - and with as little reasons? Well, I've already told you, love, she mustn't have been brought up right, or something. Anyway, she goes on They hate green eyes - which, now that she mentioned it, was the colour of the driver's eyes.

What a load of bollocks! Anyway, my poor wife was getting quite distraught with all this talk, so we stopped for a cuddle, and a drink, and, well, one thing led to another, and we had a passionate lovemaking - oh how she is wonderful.

But after that, when we're snuggled up in bed, she says you didn't finish your story, darling, and I ask if she wants to hear it - she says yes, and I ask if she is OK to hear it - and she says, maybe, but she'd let me know if got to be too much. So I kept going. It took us a moment or two to work out where I had got to, but then I get telling this sorry, sordid tale.

You see, it just kept getting better, 'cos next thing, she was blamin' all this on the Reform Religious Order - the exact same people who helped us when we went through that rough spot a few years ago, and helped the Raddicks when they were having problems with their third partner. This woman - she was like a steamroller, she was - said the RRO was what was left over from an organisation called the Holly Cath'lic - no, the ... um ... that's it! The Holy Catholic Church, and she said they were the ones who introduced the repression - her word, not mine - against loving couples like us. What a nerve she had!

And it kept on coming: she said that this ... Church mob had had connections with a city called Rome, which used to be in the Northern Federation, but back when the Federation was just lots of little groups of people - nations. Well, everyone knows that: it's part of Ancient History at school. But this, this is when she says she's a Professor of History, and that the Roman Catholic Church took over power from something called the Roman Empire, and in the Roman Empire they didn't care as much as the Roman Church did about who had sex with who - they didn't even comprehend or notice what it was the Roman Church was carrying on about.

Well, I piped up here, and said it sounded like the Empire mob were decent, civilised people, and then, this BITCH tells me off for that. Says no, the Empire was all brutality and savagery Like, and I'm quoting here, my love, like we showed against that poor - it's a quote! don't think I'm going soft on green cardigans, and I shuddered at the very thought - against that poor woman this morning. And of course, we'd all forgotten that the trollop was still on the tram, but right then, she starts to all blubberin' again, as if her eyes were bloody rain clouds or something.

But can you imagine how I felt? I'd just pointed out something decent and sensible, and this bitch had attacked me!

Well, as it turns out, my lovely wife could indeed understand how upset I felt, and by the time she'd, ah ...comforted me, well, it was getting pretty late at night. In fact, it was so late that I just cut the rest of the story short, and told her that the two of them got off the tram at the next stop, with the professor just marching, bold as brass, up to the back of the tram, and hauling - gently, I should say, but hauling, nevertheless, that evil, evil, utterly EVIL woman off with her.

And my wife, who's sharp as a tack, mind you, she asks what it was that the driver had said, and I said, oh yeah, that was when them two was getting off the tram. She said to the driver "Gonna do anything?", and he just shakes his head, and she says "And am I right about the Eastern Federation?", and that poor man, he just nods - I was close enough to see it that was when them two was getting off the tram. She said to the driver - so she says, to all and sundry "He just said YES, you bigots!" And then she was gone.

My wife, wonderful woman she is, said how much of a relief that was, and I agreed, and we snuggled, and kissed, and then we went to sleep.

Well, my wife did. I couldn't - told her next day it was because I was too upset, but you know what? The truth was, what that darn professor had said got to me. It niggled and nagged and burned at me, all the day I was sitting at work, so during my afternoon break, I looked a few things up, and she was right. There was a Roman Empire, and a Roman Catholic Church, and they were pretty much as she'd said - and even the Eastern Federation? They do hate green eyes - which is stupid beyond all belief! I mean, it's just something you're born with. It's like being ... being ... short, or thin, or yellow skinned, or who you prefer for your partners (if you have a preference). It's just something you're born with - its not a choice, like wearing a ... a ... I'm sorry, I have to mention them again, not like choosing to wear a green cardigan.

But you know what? I can't for the life of me, remember who first told me about green cardigans, and the evil they are. Don't worry - I won't go soft on evil, I'd ... just like someone who knows about these things a bit more than me to ... maybe explain it a bit better to me, like - you know?

© Kayleen White, 2009

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