"The great cat burgular of Santiago de Compostela"

The longer I know you, Alice told me switching from sympathetic to grumpy in a heartbeat when she realised I was focusing on entirely the wrong aspect of the story, the more of a caricature of yourself you become.

I have been mugged four times in the last year.

Thats a nice statement to stand alone, isn't it? First time - Nepal, last summer. I wasn't too embarrassed about it, as he was much bigger than me. I instantly threw myself into exploring all the dramatic outlets of the situation - in terms of police, emails home to friends and family alike, a trip to get what Joel refers to as a Refill but I prefer to term Getting a New Passport, which felt uncannily like I imagine applying for a bank loan would feel, complete with suspicious glances and difficult questions about What I'm Doing With my Life.
The second time was in Yemen last Decemberish. Not very exciting; no verbal interchange, no split second moment of eye contact compounded by heart stopping panic as you wonder exactly how much this is going to hurt. But one knife that struck me even at the time as being somewhat bigger than necessary. But, in all fairness, a pair of nail scissors waved in my general direction in a threatening manner would probably have had me handing over my handbag.
My bad. My tendency to wander around the less touristy areas of a city gets me into trouble fairly often.

I rather felt, at the time, that I was becoming quite the connoisseur of varying mugging techniques. I mean, twice does seem like quite a lot, doesn't it?

I was mugged again in Seoul a few months ago (post on Seoul - intense - and the Buddhist temple retreat - uncharacteristic and a half, but very cool - is forthcoming) by a very big man with hairy knuckles who used my hair to good advantage as leverage to bully me out of my Manolos and my money.

I felt rather like Carrie Bradshaw, except I wasn't in my home town and got to walk home in my barefeet. Ten minutes, but nonetheless.
My fucking Manolos.
Five minutes later, I fished a cigarette out of my jacket pocket and lit up. Nerves, you know. I smoked a lot when I was first learning to drive - high stress situations, both of them. Feeling less like crying I did another inhale - and got whacked round my head by an old lady looking downright furious. I choked on the smoke, had a slight panic attack, then realised my social faux pas.

I found, in the aftermath of that day, a huge amount of dramatic resources to exploit, finding the possibilities endless - you know; teary victim, outraged label queen, indignant fashionista, wry amusement, dry acceptance.

And then, very much more recently, I was in Santiago de Compostela and I got, if you can imagine this, mugged. A-fucking-gain. This time wins hands down over the others though; he was very pretty - I'm a bit cross that about that. Men that pretty don't come along everyday. Or rather, they haven't since I started working in a teeny tiny Galician village you'll never hear of, near Pontedeume which you might hear of one day, near La Coruña. Which is Google-able. Because the only men who've hit on me in the last four months were old men in the street, various inbred looking blokes from the village and the elderly caretaker. More of whom later.

So I'm understandably a bit put out that when a beautiful man does pop up in my sphere, he wants to steal my money.

But, to be fair, girls with character flaws like mine will always have the potential blindspot that makes them likely to give guys who look quite that beautiful all their money.

It's ok. I'm used to it now, I told my mother. I normally adhere to the 'Never tell your mother anything' rule, but . . . dramatic possibilties, you know. He was very gentlemanly about the whole thing, letting me open my purse and just give him the money. Which saves me the whole fuss and bother of canceling my plastic collection. Again.

I hate that this has happened to me so many times I can judge Gentlemanly Mugging Behaviour. Marks out of ten - did they take anything unnecessary? Did they have obscene amounts of body hair on their fists and, perhaps due to some hitherto unrealised hatred of those with decidely less body hair, feel it necessary to inflict pain upon them by tearing out a handful of their own glossy locks? Did they have a very big shiny knife that was waved in your vague direction that means you can't quite remember what they looked like but are pretty sure you could pick the knife out of a line-up?

I hate to admit it but Alice may well have been right. A variety of reactions that I can pick and choose from has always been my default position. It's all to do with defining a sense of self, something I'm working on.