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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to laugh at the batty old bloke in the supermarket?

48 replies

Sidge · 09/04/2009 21:48

I seem to attract the batty ones.

I was waiting in the line at Lidl today when the man also waiting in front of me turned round and started with the "cheer up love, it might never happen" and so on.

I smiled politely but then he started ranting on about the state of the country now, and how (I quote) it's not the same since all those bloody forriners took over, he fought the Nazis in the war and now the bloody Germans rule a third of the world and Germany runs the EU and tells the UK what to do and it's all gone to hell in a handbasket.

I then couldn't resist pointing out to him that he was in the wrong place to rant about the Germans, doing his shopping in Lidl

No Brownie points for me today then?!

OP posts:
differentEggD · 09/04/2009 21:48

fabulous. I wish I could have seen his face.

glucose · 09/04/2009 22:09

Germans? Old men still go on about Germans?

No you not BU. I think you are very quick to think of the Lidl connection!

SugarBird · 09/04/2009 22:09

Good point about Lidl but that could have been my dad - he's 87 and gets lonely so he chats to anyone and everyone when he's out and about. Then rings me and tells me about all the friendly people he meets He's not batty - just likes company but he lives alone (and refuses point blank to live near us!)

TheSmallClanger · 09/04/2009 22:11

You made a good point. He sounds like the sort of chap who likes a good old argument, though, so I doubt he was really offended.

Original poster
Sidge · 09/04/2009 22:14

Don't think it was your dad SugarBird, he didn't look 87!

I really don't mind chatting in supermarkets, donkeys' hind legs aren't safe when I'm around but this bloke was just so racist and miserable! If he'd started a conversation about the weather, or Easter eggs, or something neutral I would have joined in happily but his vitriol was astounding especially as I could have been German for all he knew

OP posts:
SugarBird · 09/04/2009 22:18

I think it's the age, Sidge! My dad comes out with some awful Daily Express-type stuff about 'foreigners' - which is bizarre since he's from India . He does love to share his views on everything with everyone - but isn't miserable (except when he's moaning at me...) so it couldn't have been him!! He'd have been much more likely to talk about Easter eggs with you as he's a chocolate addict

glucose · 09/04/2009 22:33

Ah well sidge the Indian oldies near us I have heard complaining about 'the Poles!'

SugarBird · 09/04/2009 22:40

Glucose - that probably was my dad!!

OldLadyKnowsNothing · 10/04/2009 00:47

Depending on how old this man was, it's perfectly possible that he lived through a time when we (in UK) were at war with Germany. It really isn't all that long ago.

He may have had friends or family members killed by Germans, in battle or in the death camps. He may have faced and witnessed death on the Front Line himself.

Perhaps he was expressing a form of disappointment or confusion (even call it bitterness) that the deaths and deprivations of that time, which were suffered in order to stop Germany ruling Europe, seem somehow to have ended in a situation where his local supermarket is bloody German*!

OldLadyKnowsNothing · 10/04/2009 00:49

Ah, yes, on re-reading the OP, I see he did fight in WWII. Have you no compassion for an old soldier?

YanknbeforetheCockcrows · 10/04/2009 01:03

I LURRVVE it when people go on to me about 'foreigners'. I can then point out the very obvious fact that I am American, and therefore 'foreign'. V. funny to watch them stumble around that one, because usually what they mean by 'foreigner' is 'non-white'. Some are stupidly racist enough to go, 'well yes, but you're white'.

lisad123 · 10/04/2009 01:10

Was it my FIL he is racist, sexist and a pigist!!

QuintessentialShadow · 10/04/2009 01:14

sad world.
Well said OldLadyKnowsNothing

midlandsmumof4 · 10/04/2009 01:43

Agree with OldLadyKnowsNothing--you should be ashamed. If it weren't for others like him Lidl could have been our Tesco/Asda/Sainsbury. Why did you not humour hiom cos of age? Wouldn't have hurt would it? .

Original poster
Sidge · 10/04/2009 09:45

OldLady I am aware that may have been the case. My Grandad was a Polish POW, my other Grandad fought in WWII.

If this man had expressed his opinions with reason and intellect I would have been more inclined to listen and humour him but offensive vitriol and racism is not my idea of a conversation starter and I will not join in.

Why should I be ashamed? I didn't kick him to the ground and rob him of his grocery money. As it was I smiled politely, made one comment and then laughed inside.

I guess you had to be there...

OP posts:
OldLadyKnowsNothing · 10/04/2009 13:48

Perhaps you did have to be there, and to an extent I see why you said what you did (though you rather missed his point, there). But aren't old men allowed to rant and rave a bit from time to time, just like MNers do, without being laughed at? Are only intellectual ex-squaddies allowed to express the irony of the situation in which he now finds himself?

ZZZen · 11/04/2009 15:26

I don't know in which way the Germans rule a third of the world and have the say in the EU. THeir own mass opinion take is that they pay disproportionatley INTO the EU and then don't get much say in what happens with that money. THey think it is run by the French

When I lived in Germany, I forever had old folk approaching me and telling me about the war, from the guy with one leg who kept trying to press 1 Euro (!) on me so I would know there were also good Germans to the old lady who said I'm so lucky to have blue eyes and that in Nazi Germany her schoolteacher had told her to tell her mum to wash her eyes properly at home because they were all dirty (ie brown). She cried when she said that.

I helped a tottering old duck back up off the ground when she fell over and took her to her home with her nattering away the whole time about when she was young and wore the most amazingly high heels and could even run in them, but when I said I was from the UK, a look of fear came into her face and I tell you she looked terrified like I was about to break into her flat and murder her or something. She was very very old.

I never wanted to hear all the war stories but they all wanted to tell them. I just think WW II was so horrific and drastic that people who went through it don't ever seem to put it right behind them.

I don't know why that old man in Lidl thought he was seeing Germans everywhere and that they were running the world though. I just listen to old folk and let them tell their story but I don't like it if they bang on about foreigners either. After all if you go back far enough, we will all be somehow of foreign descent since as far as I know man didn't develop in the British Isles but wandered there from elsewhere

giantkatestacks · 11/04/2009 15:30

I was in the queue at Morrisons cafe the other day and some old boy started on about 'the asians' and the way they kept reusing the teabags and decanted the expensive organic eggs into cheap barn egg boxes I just said 'well isnt that clever' and ignored him...

[expects proper MNers to come along and tell me that it was my own fault for being in a Morrisons]

ZZZen · 11/04/2009 15:32

maybe we should all just stick to online shopping eh and be done with it. Maybe 20 years from now, mums will have to explain old fashioned books to their dc that mention going to a shop

ZZZen · 11/04/2009 15:34

sorry too groggy to read properly, that was a cafe....

fishie · 11/04/2009 15:36

sidge didn't you think maybe he deserved a bit of respect? and now you come and mock him here.

MadameCastafiore · 11/04/2009 15:40

Have you thouhgt that maybe he wasn't batty? Maybe he had denentia?

I hope you treat the elders in your family with a little respect and realise for those that did fight in the war it never has really been over, they live it in their heads everyday, see awful images and I really think ranting about the germans when you have seen the awful things they have is pretty understandable.

ssd · 11/04/2009 15:46

sidge, I see from your profile you are 37. I'm presuming you don't yet have an old, doddery parent?

Its not so funny when the old man/woman talking what appears to be nonsense to anyone who'll listen in the supermarket is your dad or mum.

frankly, your attitude stinks, in 5 years on MN this is the nastiest, meanest post I've ever seen.

hope you're proud of yourself.

ssd · 11/04/2009 15:48

and for what its worth, my dad was in the war and his memories haunted him till the day he died.

ssd · 11/04/2009 15:51

haven't you seen the adverts, about looking at the person and not their age?

sorry for keeping posting, but God, you've so wound me up with your attitude.

maybe someone young will be laughing about you one day, eh?