Charity Brawl

This morning at about half past six I got into a fight.

Outside a charity shop.

I was taking my dog Max for a walk and we were crossing the road at a zebra crossing. A man was crossing the road towards me at the same time, shaking his head and tutting loudly. At first I thought he was having some kind of nervous reaction to my dog-walking clobber (this morning’s delightful ensemble included bright green hoodie, stripy Dr Who scarf and electric blue tracksuit bottoms). But then the man looked back over his shoulder, continuing to shake his head, and I saw the real object of his disgust  – a woman pilfering through some bags that had been left outside our local charity shop.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen people doing this on my early morning dog walks, but normally, like the man I saw today, I just shake my head and give them a dirty look as I walk past. But today something inside me snapped.

Yesterday I found out that a colleague’s mother had died of cancer. She had been diagnosed shortly after my boyfriend Steve and it really rammed home to me what a sick lottery this disease can be. I guess I had quite a bit of anger inside me just waiting to come out.

So this morning, when I saw the woman stuffing her carrier bag full of somebody else’s charitable donations I didn’t just shake my head and I didn’t just tut and I didn’t just give her a death stare. I stopped, took a deep breath and said, ‘I think you’d better put that back.’

The woman stared at me.

I stared back.

She dropped her gaze, clutched her bag of spoils to her chest and barged past me, knocking into me as she went.

Well that was it, I’m afraid.

I grabbed hold of her arm, pulled her to a stop and grabbed the bag from her hand.

Then I marched back over to the ransacked binliners in the shop doorway, returned the stolen goods and, seeing the woman still staring at me, uttered the immortal words, ‘so what are you going to f***in’ do about it?’

Ah well – you can take the girl from the council estate and you can even give her a book deal…

Then my trusty companion Max started barking and growling his head off at her (it was an RSPCA shop after all) and the woman scuttled off.

Just like that.