The Student Formerly Known As Betta

So as I get to the bus station on the way to Rome, I rool up with my blue carryon wheelie and I have no idea, of course, what terminal I'm sposed to get off at right? So the bus driver takes one look at me and says: "Easyjet® right?" I certainly hope there hadn't been anything about me that day that could have led a perfect stranger simply to assume I was a no-frills kind of person - but this is a big issue we must address whenever we interact in cities with people we don't know.Ok. So I had forgotten all about that trouble until yesterday when I was, recovering from Salmonellosis(tm?) making my way through Oxford very slowly because I am still pretty weak. So I paid the Broad Street Oxfam - I don't know why - I don't go there often. So I was looking around and what I guess you would call "knick knacks" or general gimrackery and then I went downstairs and thinking I wasn't going to find anything, was very excited to find a pair of brand new - as evident from their unscathed soles - Tod's loafers. Ok so I tried them on and walked around in them and really liked them in principle and at £20 was tempted, but then remembered that Cognac is a drink, a relatively boring region of France, but unfortunately not a colour. I told the woman thanks but no thanks and I was putting them back was overjoyed though to find not one, but two brand new Hermès ties. The salesclerk was very talkative and very clearly drunk or retarded or both too and she started going on about how so many people just buy things, never wear them and then just give them to Oxfam and she can't comprehend the how or why. I want to be polite but since she is clearly drunk I'm not that interested and so offhandedly I say "yeah - I suppose some people can do that..." And so then she says she guesses some people can, (and remember - these are the people who came up with the Soup for Seated is the new Thursday Night idea...) but that she certainly can't and looking me up and down (and in this town, her being related to said bus driver is not improbable) she says that "from the looks of you, you certainly can't either" (!!) What the hell was I sposed to say? Thanks? At £3 the tie and my self esteem had each undergone a (approx.) 97% reduction by the time I had left the store. I hope these are what I keep hearing about as "seasonal reductions" and that some day soon when the weather takes a turn, perfect strangers will stop going out of their way to tell me I look awful. Fuck you Lady. I hope that full beard God(tm?) gave you at 30 keeps you warm at night...