PANTS

I’m sitting in the front row at this talk. One of the guest speakers is a woman, in her early thirties, wearing a summer skirt.

She sits down and crosses her legs, elaborately rearranging her skirt as she does.

And flashing her pants at me.

Nothing wrong with that. A simple mistake. Nothing rude in my mind, certainly nothing erotic.

Big black pants.

But being the nice too-English-at-times boy I am, I automatically flinch and look away.

When I look back, she’s staring straight at me as though she knows I’ve just seen her underwear. And she seems to think I’ve done it purpose, that I sneaked a peak in a pervy way. As though I’ve just visually groped her.

As things are settling down, I turn and talk to my friend, but all the time I’m conscious of these eyes watching me and I can almost hear her thoughts ‘you…you…you…”

If women are going to wear skirts and dresses surely they have to take responsibility and keep them under control?

Of course, there are plenty of pervs out there. A few years ago I was at London Bridge waiting for a train home from work. A really sweltering afternoon. I noticed a fairly pretty girl with long legs and a very short, white skirt on. Behind her a guy squatted down as though to tie his shoe lace, but the slid his phone across the floor so it was aligned between her feet, took a picture, looked at the result, decided it wasn’t good enough and had another go.

It wasn’t me, I hasten to reiterate.