(Insulting Actions)
How to be Insulting on Public Transport
How to be Insulting in the Street
How to be Insulting Abroad
How to be Insulting in Theaters
How to be Insulting in Banks
How to be Insulting on the Beach
How to be Insulting at Christmas
How to be Insulting in Church
How to be Insulting in Hotels
How to be Insulting to Neighbours
How to be Insulting on Public Transportation
Sit in the seats reserved for the elderly and don't budge from them until you are forcibly thrown off the bus.
Travel during the peak periods with huge boxes and parcels and put these on seats next to you when you sit down.
Pretend to be foreign when the conductor asks for your fare and keep giving the wrong money. If you are only going a short distance, you might be able to get off without paying at all.
On a crowded underground train lean against another passenger, or hang on to someone's tie.
How to be Insulting in the Street
Walk along as if you have stepped in something un-pleasant, by pretending to scrape your feet along the pavement or rubbing your soles on any available patches of grass. Then look daggers at anyone walking a dog.
Approach a complete stranger as if you are about to welcome them warmly, but instead walk straight past and disappear into a shop.
Find a bus-stop with a waste-bin attached to it. Hide a small bottle of champagne and a leg of chicken in the bottom. Wait for a queue to form at the bus-stop. Then go and rummage in the gutter and finally look in the bin. Find the things you've hidden and devour them in front of the people waiting for the bus.
Wave frantically across the street to people who are trying to ignore you and try to attract as much attention to them as you can.
Step on to a zebra crossing just as a car is accelerating towards it. Leave enough room for the car to brake, but make sure that it has to come to a complete halt while you cross. You could try dropping something on the crossing, like a bag of Brussel sprouts. Picking them up will infuriate any irate motorist.
How to be Insulting Abroad
Insist on paying for everything in sterling.
Drive on the wrong side of the road in the ferry terminals.
Ask for local delicacies and leave them on your plate.
Drink Guinness or Scotch everywhere.
Wear your military decorations at all customs checks.
Carry toy pistols in every pocket in America.
Buy copies of leading foreign newspapers and use them to clean up the children, wrap up scraps, or keep your head dry in the rain.
Order a cup of tea at 9.00 p.m. in a pavement cafe on a Saturday night and sit over it for as long as you dare.
Insist on tuning your car radio into the BBC, no matter how bad the reception and how loud the volume. (You can do this in your tent, your hotel room, or anywhere else if you take a transistor with you.)
In Moslem countries carry large whisky or gin bottles, full of water, in your luggage and try to fake the seals on the caps.
If camping, have your tent made out of material designed like the Union Jack. Try to pitch it next to some Germans, if you can stand them for a fortnight.
How to be Insulting in Theaters
Always try to arrive five minutes after the show has sta'rted. Arrange to sit in the middle of a row and so make as many people stand to let you in as you can.
Women can try wearing hats in theatres to block the view for anyone sitting behind.
Noisy wrappings on sweets can be unwrapped at moments of tension when the rest of the theatre is silent.
Try to find out when the first act ends and get up from your seat about a minute before that time. This will get you to the bar first and it will also ruin the final moments of the scene for anyone near you.
If the person sitting in front of you is blocking your view try adopting an irritating cough, or kicking your feet under their seat. Nasty, wet sneezes down the back of their neck are also effective in persuading them to look elsewhere for a seat.
Keep lighting your cigarette lighter or striking a match to look at the programme. Alternatively, if you're in the cinema try to find a place where no one else is smoking and light up in the middle of them.
How to be Insulting in Banks
If there isn't a queue, form one by asking the cashier as many questions as you can think of until the people behind you get fed up and either go out or move to another window.
If there is a queue, make it longer by writing your cheque incorrectly. Get the date wrong. Write another name by mistake and appear to see the fraud, enter a huge sum, say £10,000, and then change it to £10.00. Drop your pen, or lose it in your handbag while this is going on.
Arrive at the bank without your cheque book. Ask to draw out some cash. Forget your account number. Give a wrong name. Have difficulty in finding any proof of your identity. And do all this either when there's a lunch-time rush of customers, or just as the bank is about to close.
Try to use one of the automatic cash-dispensers, but use it incorrectly. If it's inside the bank do this until someone is sent to help you out or until you're asked to leave. If it's outside the bank, kick the machine and try to open it with your car keys, a pen-knife or your umbrella.
Put your old sandwiches into the night-safe pouch and complain by letter when it's returned to you empty.
Take a tape-recorder with you to the meeting with the manager. Say nothing the entire time, but simply record all he says to you. Then when he's finished play it back to him at twice the speed and leave.
When ordering travellers cheques try to get the smallest denomination available and then take ages signing each cheque in front of the cashier.
If you can manage to spill ink, try to do it on the floor as well as the desk and tear sheets of blotting paper from the pads provided.
How to be Insulting on the Beach
If there's enough sand, dig huge walls around your site and try to put your neighbours in the shade.
Try to find sea-weed and drag this along the beach, leaving bits beside other people's places.
Take elaborate picnics with iced wine and proper cutlery, especially if you've noticed that everyone else is eating corned beef out of the tin.
Buy several large newspapers and leave these lying around so that they blow all over the beach.
If donkey rides are available, and if you can afford it, monopolise the donkeys all afternoon.
Hire the loudest and smelliest speed-boat you can find and water-ski up and down the beach so that few other people can swim.
Sit stolidly by the water with a fishing rod and throw revolting lumps of old bread into the water where the children are enjoying themselves.
How to be Insulting at Christmas
Arrange for all your Christmas presents to be delivered to people in the first week in January.
Refuse to give any guests a drink on the grounds that it's for their own good not to drink and drive. Have plenty of soft drinks to offer them though. Then pour yourself a large Scotch, on the grounds that you aren't going anywhere and don't have to worry.
Buy crackers without any little gifts inside. If you have the time beforehand put unpleasant little remarks and observations inside them instead. You might try to glue the paper hats together so that they tear when the guests try to open them.
Try to find what you were given last year and give it back to the person who gave it to you.
Try to duplicate presents wherever possible then lose the receipts so that none of them can be exchanged. If they happen to be things you want yourself, so much the better. Just offer to take them back.
Turn up the television when the carol singers arrive and turn off the lights until they go away.
How to be Insulting in Church
Arrive late for any service and arrive noisily. Forget at least one, if not both books and try to make others stand up while you go back for the ones you need.
Always try to be half a line ahead of the vicar and always be as loud as you dare in the responses.
Sing out of tune in all the hymns and try singing half a line behind everyone else.
If you just want to look inside the church go in when you see the sign 'Service in progress'. Take photographs with a bright flash-gun.
Pour water into the font and wash your hands in it. If you're really daring, take off your shoes and socks and cool your feet.
How to be Insulting in Hotels
Watch television until close-down. Then pop in your earplugs and switch the radio on to play all night while you sleep.
Hang your bedding out of the window every morning, especially if it's raining.
Call room-service last thing at night, when the kitchens have just been locked, and ask for a cheese sandwich and a glass of fresh milk. Make sure that you leave them untouched and conspicuous the next morning.
If you have to get up early do it with the maximum amount of noise. Run a bath loudly and sing in it.
Leave as many pairs of shoes outside your door as you can muster, especially if some are caked in mud.
How to be Insulting to Neighbours
On moving in erect a fence at least six feet high with a garish finish on their side.
Hold wild, exciting parties in the garden but don't invite them.
Having erected the fence use it for target practice with a cricket ball or a football.
If you share a drive, erect a fence down your half, or relay your part with crazy paving, or some other ostentatious surface.
Try to grow a few obnoxious weeds on your side of the fence and then gradually train these to grow through or under it into the neighbour's garden.
