Last month I found out that there was going to be a concert of Balkan brass music with four gypsy bands. I was pretty excited as this is a rare opportunity here to listen to this kind of music.

It was not to be. Not for me at least.

A few minutes after we took our seats, some middle-aged hippie woman came up to us and asked me if I was going to dance. “Because I have a few friends coming and they might want to sit where you are,” she explained.

Matt and I laughed and turned back to face the stage. The hippie then pulled out a kazoo and tested it out. Five minutes later, when her friends came, she explained that she brought, in addition to her kazoo, a pair of maracas and a shaker. She wanted to jam with the band. Maybe go outside and jam with the gypsy bands on the street. Maybe go into the downstairs bar and jam with the bands there.

Alas, she decided to stay put.

For the next thirty minutes, she shook those maracas inches from my ears along with each song the real band played. In tune, out of tune, she shook. And shook. And shook. And shook.

Other audience members began glancing backwards, with awkward smiles.

I sat seething, twiddling the flowers on the table, holding myself back from crushing them. Each time a new song started, maracas-and-kazoo hippie waited until the song got going and then began her maracas-shaking in my ear again.

My fantasies during the half an hour of suffering ranged from getting my revenge afterwards online to grabbing her maracas and hitting her on the head with them. At one point in my head-hitting fantasy, I tried to stop myself and put down the maracas – then relented, grabbed a chair and hit her with that instead.

When I could stand it no more, I got up to complain to the staff. I managed to almost walk away. Then I looked at her face and yelled, “You’re fucking annoying!”

Kazoo-and-maracas hippie looked at me in utter confusion.

Matt afterwards told me that he was fantasizing during her hijacking of the main concert too. Things like grabbing her maracas and tossing them onto the dance floor. Or crushing the maracas and spilling the beans all into the hippie’s face.

I fear I may have hurt her feelings. Weirdly, though, I feel better. Minimal guilt. Probably would have felt angry for years to come if I hadn’t blurted out my venom.