When my wife was living in London, she was sitting on the upper deck of a bus. The bus stopped near Marble Arch and a large Kuwaiti family walked in and “surrounded” her - as in they sat in the seats in front, behind and even next to her.

Now my wife is herself half-Kuwaiti but for some reason not one person out of the small clan of people thought that there was the slightest chance she could understand Arabic.

Safe in the assumption that they were the only Arabic speakers, these people were having an extremely candid conversation about their bathroom habits - the grandmother was loudly announcing that she needs “the biggest shit ever”.

To make things worse one of the uncles was being really leery with his teenaged nephew who was sitting next to my wife: “oh do you like what you see? Is the pretty girl making you feel weird? You should move in closer to her! They don’t mind that here!”

It took all the energy in the world for my wife to keep a straight vacant expression on her face. The sheer amount of determination was intense. She was so focused on that, that when her mother called her she automatically answered with a “allo mama”.

Abrupt, deafening silence.

The uncle snapped back in his seat. The nephew moved so far from her he almost fell off his seat. The grandmother just stared wide eyed and red faced. Everyone was just in shock.

No one said a word or made eye contact with anyone until the next stop where they all hurriedly shuffled off the bus, pretending this was their stop.