Blather

I led a charmed life, that’s probably how I turned out to be perfect. I was born to a mother that tried to abort me with a bottle of Domestos and the smell still makes me pig- sick, and when that didn’t work she drank it. The fat health visitor said it was post- natal- depression that did it, or PND, which made me sound like a PIN number that kept coming out wrong. She had it before I was born, before I was conceived, before I was even thought of as a selfish bastard that was always crying. She didn’t know who the father was and I didn’t either, which suited us both just fine. That was called bonding over a no good drunken bastard that stayed four doors up with a fat trollop that thinks she’s something. I was just an accident waiting to happen. My mum was an accident. I came from a family of accidents. Most of my brothers and all of my sitters were accidents. Others were still on the ovary shelf, still waiting, going off like foot mould, and suffering from accident rot.

It was all different when I learned how to walk and talk and reason. Middle aged woman smelling of fag ash, cheap vodka, bathtub gin, made a great play of my cutey-wooteyness, swooped and swooned and left great sloppy sweet smeared lipstick kisses on my left cheek leaving me lopsided, with an unmarked envelope for a right cheek.

I grew up perfectly, hot-housed, and with the wisdom of a Tao master. If you follow the Mayan calendar, painted in red and white Santa colours to blend in with the other festivities, the answer you were looking for will pop out of its little perforated cardboard window with pictures of the rolling green hills of Kentucky. It will be in scroll form, which will crumble to grey dust, because dust is always grey (apart from white dust) but I will translate the Mayan hieroglyphics: ‘Thank you for the pox and the pestilence, for raping our women, feeding our children to your dogs, for the desecration of our most holy shrines. The world is going to end in 2012 and it’s your fault. Don’t look away, or look for someone else to blame. Yes. It’s your fault. Don’t look away. It’s your fault. It’s too late for you, but not too late to care, to help those Mayans who still hurt. All major credit cards accepted. Gently said the night. Thank you said the morning. All major credit cards accepted’.

I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I took my seal skin gloves back to Argos as I wouldn’t be needing them. I must admit to having stayed in the house too much and watched too much telly. The coming apocalypse was just the impetus I needed to get out. I don’t bother over much with buses, just walked to the Shoppie through the scary tunnel at Singers and tended to look at the ground because that’s where it is. The ground never lets you down, never asks anything of you.

‘Hi-ya.’ Mrs Greaves said, as she tottered along the uneven grey concrete slabs at the start of the industrial estate with no industry in it. Mrs Greaves had been one of my chubby-cheeked tormentors when I was younger. She hadn’t changed any, her brown hair lying on her yellow Mackintoshed shoulders, limp as a Gorgon that couldn’t be bothered with styling, or highlights.

I didn’t see her, walked straight past her, and didn’t say anything, because I was concentrating on what I was going to say when I got into the store, and didn’t want to look.

I have every sympathy for shop workers. In my light-fingered days I used to put in the odd appearance so I got to know when was a good time, and when someone was having one of those off days. The shop assistant had everything: hair, teeth, those enormous wide apart eyes, like Cyclops, only there are two of them, eyes I mean, not Cyclops, although two Cyclops might not have been a bad idea. She had the lip trimmings of a moustache so she had potential. All she needed was the one eye. Two eyes spoiled her. When the world ended no one would want to rush up and kiss her bristly tache. Maybe they would. The Mayans knew about things like that. The difference between Argos' and Boots' workers are multifarious, but the latter are boiled in free samples of the cheapest perfumes, the former are allowed to smell like cat pee, in a place without cats. I knew she was going to be a snarler before I even spoke to her. They always put snarlers on returns. And when they haven’t got a snarler at the till they’ve got one training in another part of the store so that they can ‘page’ them over the loudspeakers.

Ping, ping. ‘Man wants to return seal skin gloves he bought at Easter.’

Ping, Ping. ‘He says he’s not worn them.

Ping. Ping. ‘No receipt.’

Ping. Ping. ‘He says he bought them at Easter, but Christmas is just a continuation of the joyous event and he’d like his money back.

Ping. Ping. ‘…Please release me let me go, because I don’t love you any more. We’ve lived a life of…Release me and let me love again…’

‘Someone will be right with you sir.’ Those were the first words Cyclops addressed to me.

The supervisor marched from behind the scenes. I could tell she was so-oooooh sincere. Sincere people always have long hair and a middle parting. It’s the Nana Mouskouri complex. They should all really be also wearing thick black NHS glasses, and be glamorous, but she wasn’t Nana Mouskouri glamorous. If I was being picky she shouldn’t even have had a middle parting. She should have had flicky- side- shed hair, the kind that goes with wearing a thick belt around their dress, so you know where the bum starts, and an open necked shirt that just invites a roving hand, but they’ve always got some kind of jumper with red-diamond patterns that fits so smugly over their breasts that it is like wearing a chastity belt on the outside. And flicky- haired females used to do that thing with their flicky hair and look at you out of the side of their eyes as if you were doing a turd in their mouth and not just smooching them, and trying to get a bit of action before you got too old. One of those kind of girls with flicky hair that would push you away, but I’d sense it coming, and jump back from the flickers first, and say ‘I wasn’t doing anything apart from trying to feel your tits.’ And that would be another relationship over; flicky- haired, and a no-way –fuck, and all because of diamond patterned jumpers. I knew the supervisor was class because she didn’t wear a uniform, just a velvet jump suit (no hairy V- neck diamond jumper for her), but a little red kerchief tied at the neck in the colours of Argos.

‘Can I help you sir?’ She had a pleasant sing-song voice.

It was all business now, so that I didn’t want to have an affair with her, or even casual sex. She might be into other girls, a lesbo, or into dogging. I wasn’t going to make any assumptions about her proclivities based on her appearance and the fact that the top two buttons of her blouse were undone, showing a bit of white skin and the hint of a bra strap underneath her Dana outfit.

‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘Here’s these gloves back. I don’t need them now that the world is ending.’ I put them down on the counter. Argos hasn’t got a separate place for returns like B & Q, with dedicated staff. They just use the same counter that they package things and hand over to the public. That could get a bit confusing, but I didn’t say anything, what with the cut-backs that was quite understandable. Maybe even B & Q would go the same way. That would put young Jimmy the shop- lifter out of work. But it was a hard world, a cruel world, maybe the Mayans had it just pat, and they’d enough of B & Q and Argos with their customer service that wasn’t worth a dud firework. ‘I don’t want a credit note,’ I added, ‘because I’ll probably not have time to spend it. I’ll just take cash please And you can keep the odd penny.’ I smiled and was generally very nice about it.

‘I’m sorry sir…’

Shop supervisors are trained in robot speak. If I wanted to talk to a robot I’d have phoned the talking clock.

‘Look Lady they’re your gloves and I want to return them.’

The corner of her mouth crinkled up into something that resembled a smile, making her appear almost human, but she wasn’t taking me seriously. The Mayans had a place for people like her and if it was too full the Christians I’m sure still would have plenty of room. ‘Look I want to see your supervisor.’

‘I am a supervisor and I don’t like people that point their finger in a threatening manner.’

She was becoming passive aggressive and the only way to trump her was to trick her. ‘Look it’s not that I don’t like the gloves. I think they are perfectly wonderful. The thing is I can’t wear them for religious reasons. I’m a Jain and can’t wear seal skin gloves because it reminds me of some little seal strolling along, minding its own business and, suddenly, Zap.’ I waved one of the little mitts in front of her face. ‘It gets turned inside out and made into a glove.’ She seemed to be taking it in, so I went for the overkill, ‘and Zap, another little seal pup for the other glove.’ Even though there was a counter between us she took a step backwards.

‘I’m sorry sir, but I can assure you no seal or seal pup was hurt in the making of these gloves.’

‘How did they make them then?’

‘Well, sir that’s like divulging the recipe for Coke. It’s not in our company’s policy to divulge such secrets, but I can assure you no seal was hurt in the making of those gloves.’ She patted one that I’d left lying on the counter.

It seemed to be getting a bit chillier in the store. I picked up my seal skin gloves and put them on. ‘Fine. How about a date then?’

‘A date sir?’

‘Yeh. A date then we can have sex. The world’s going to end.’

She laughed. ‘I don’t think so sir. Not if you were the last man.’

I was sick of getting messed about. ‘I want to speak to your supervisor.’