I have developed a loathing for one of the other guests at the hotel. To such an extent that whenever I see her I scowl at her and give her the evil eye.
Which might just about be acceptable in the guest was not a girl of about 9 years of age who has accidentally invited my ire only by dancing. But honestly she deserves it. The bitch.
It started a few days ago when we were enjoying an after dinner drink in the bar. The hotel had kindly laid on entertainment for the night, a local band who worked their way competently enough through a few covers of popular songs. They were having fun and it was diverting enough in the late evening heat.
There was space in front of the stage for people to dance, but no one in the full bar was doing so. Until the little girl sitting with her mum and dad in front of us got up and made her way confidently to the front. She was wearing a flowing dress and a strange little crop top/bikini top affair which seemed inappropriate for someone so young and who had no breasts. But it was clear from the way that she deported herself that she was not lacking in confidence and had an exaggerated idea of her own attractiveness.
She started to dance to the music. Not the awkward jiving and shuffling that most 9 year olds would attempt, but something more graceful and choreographed and ostentatious. She had clearly had some dance lessons and was glad to be showing off her skills to the world. She wasn't too bad, but it all just seemed a little bit too much.
This wasn't the delightful lack of self-consciousness that young children can demonstrate. This was clearly (to me at least) a spoilt, prissy little only-child princess showing off to her parents and assuming everyone else in the room would be interested in it too. She was taking focus from the band and performing not for her own pleasure, but outwardly to the whole room. And she was a child so the rest of us had to smile and put up with it and be expected to remark how grown up and proficient she was.
I didn't want to do that though. I had already decided she was a cunt.
At the time I was still reading Peter Kay's book, so maybe she was catching some of the flak from that by association. There is a telling story in that where during a school performance of "Wizard of Oz" (in which he played the cowardly lion) he has missed a rehearsal and is asked to sit a dance out in the show as a result. But instead he decides to steal focus from all the other kids who had learned the routine and on the spur of the moment larks around and prances into the audience and cocks his leg up against one of the girls who is playing a tree. He recalls bringing the house down with his ad-libbed antics, but I wonder how many of the audience and the cast were secretly thinking "What an attention seeking cunt! You had plenty of stuff to do in the show. Why steal the limelight from the others at this point too?"
But on a smaller scale this Pan's People style dance, with just one person, also seemed a bit inappropriate. It wasn't a child being cute. It was a precocious youngster showing off. And her parents rather than encouraging her to stop, smiled and took photos. And she kept looking at them for affirmation that what she was doing was brilliant.
And it might have been OK if she had left it at one song. But she took a round of applause, which the band graciously got for her, sat down for a second, then immediately got up to do the whole thing again for the next number. And the next.
I wondered how people would feel if I got up and danced along with her. It might at least put her off her stride, but could also possibly lead to accusations of more serious inappropriateness on my part.
Then the band started playing a Michael Jackson song and a few couples got up to dance as well. The girl looked put out and tried to do her elaborate routine in a much smaller space.
I had decided that there was nothing she could do now in her whole life that would stop her being my mortal enemy.
Finally the band came to the end of their last song and the singer came down to the parents and got the child's name - "Give a round of applause for Georgia!" he said and there was what I like to think was a half-hearted clap from a room of adults who also thought this vain little creature was a prick. She got up, flicking her hair back and I thought she was about to bow, but she was actually readying herself for the next song. But there was no next song. The band had finished and now some local dancers were coming on to perform. She had to get off and watch other people dance now. Take that Georgia. You nine year old twat.
And I have held this grudge for days. I have seen her swanning around with her mum and dad a few times and I want to say, "You're not all that, you know," or "I saw you dancing the other day and you were shit," or "Your parents think you are amazing and beautiful, but in actual fact you are merely average, so keep it to yourself" or just, "Act like a proper nine year old and stop being so up yourself" or at least give her a slap. But I don't do any of those things, because society dictates that if I did so I would be in the wrong.
Which is ridiculous.
Of course there is something more unsettling about a 42 year old man having a vendetta against a child a quarter of his age, who has done nothing wrong and to be scowling at her every time she passes, wishing she would trip up at any second and cry. And you might even think that I am the evil one in this story.
But it isn't me. It's Georgia. I like most kids, but some you can already tell are going to grow up into idiotic adults and she is one.
I fully suspect that she will Google herself regularly, so I have a faint hope that she may one day come across this entry and recognise herself and find out that no one likes her.
It would be a fitting reward for her efforts.
