Scary Mary

Today we drove to Faversham where there are many original Tudor buildings on their Elizabethan town plan. Had lunch in a C17th pub. In walked Scary Mary, a local lunatic in her late 60s. She seated herself across the room from our table. And then at regular intervals she started yelling abusive gibberish at everyone in sight. She then began to respond directly to anything we said to each other in our conversation, which was quite disconcerting, to say the least. She would pick up on the first words any of us said and then weave an elaborate, venomous, nonsensical diatribe around it, all the while staring at us and sending hate-beams from her eyes full blast in our direction. For instance, A. R. was talking about heating bills and said, "It can get really cold..." and, instantly, the demented loon yelled at us, "Don't you put my winter down! - what do you know about it!?"... This went on for half an hour. My own treatment came when I started to speak to my brother about something. In she came with, "Oh you're so educated! - you don't know anything - we always had cutlery on the table - tell her! - what does she know?"

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