Lady-janine - // For goodness sake. Anyone who dresses as Ms Headley did/does is going to get asked where she is from at some point. Probably more than once so she why could she not have been gracious and explained she just likes fancy dress. //
Ms Hedley was asked where she came from, and she answered.
The fact that the person asking her patently did not believe her response, based on her dress and skin colour, is not her problem.
As for 'fancy dress' - Lady Hussey should be more than used to that, given some of the get-ups the royals appear in when in public, so if she is ignorant enough to assume that how someone chooses to dress is 'fancy dress' as you put it, then again, that is not Me Hedley's problem.
// For heaven's sake woman you were not abused and this is all a storm in an eggshell. Man/woman up. You are claiming to be an experienced person when dealing with people. Act like it. //
Being 'experienced' with people does not mean you have to smile politely and make nice when someone is interrogating you about your racial origins, because they don't like the truthful response you have given them.
In my view 'manning up' is exactly what Ms Hedley did. She experienced considerable rudeness, and called the rude person out on it.
I entirely agree that she has since taken the incident and magnified it and distorted it beyond what it was, but that neither mitigates or excuses Lady Hussey's behaviour.
And as I have said before, if Lady Hussey can acknowledge that her rudeness caused offence, and apologise for it - why can't you?