Ugly Puggly 38

When I did the weekly shop, now Ugly Puggly wasn’t cooking, I brought back lots of booze to compensate. The local shops knew to expect me at any time. A distinguished older gent in his boxer shorts and slippers, looking over the shopkeeper’s heads at the glittering shelves like a kid entering Santa’s grotto. Holding out banknotes and asking them to fill my sack.

‘Cannae pal,’ said the Asian shopkeeper, smirking as he sorted out the delivery of rolls and papers.

‘How no?’

Otherwise, known as the Scottish question. The first thing you learned as a kid wasn’t how to pronounce ‘Ma’ or ‘Da’ but ‘how no’? It was a class thing, like putting four sugars in your tea. You were taught not to expect anything. And like Zeno’s paradox, proof that although you were asking a question, you didn’t expect a logical answer, but the exception to the rule, rule.

He aligned the papers on the racks while I pulled up my boxer shorts. ‘Cause I cannae sell alcohol until 10 am,’ he replied.

‘Whit time is it, noo?’

‘Just after six.’

‘Day or night?’

One of his Asian colleagues came into the shop and looked over to where we were standing chatting. He flung the question back at his colleague, and nodded his head in my direction. ‘Ali, is it day or night?’

‘Eh, day,’ he offered me a slow smile, and pulled up the hatch and stood in the dock beside the till.

‘Cheers, pal. I’ll just wait then.’

I’d forgotten the name of the Asian guy nearest me, even though he’d told me a minute before. ‘You cannae Jim,’ he patted my arm in commiseration. ‘Because that’s nearly four hours.’

‘It’s alright, I’ll buy a paper.’ My hand darted away from the Tory Scumbag Sun as if it had been stung and I pulled out a Guardian. All the bumf falling to the floor.

We almost bumped heads among the Birthday Card section of the aisle. I squatted down and so did he, handing me the magazine. And shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s alright, I’m a slow reader.’ I smiled back at him. ‘I just need to go and turn aff the van engine.’

‘You driving?’ he said in a jumpy voice so his colleague looked over.

‘Nah! Don’t be daft.’ I’d a good look at the Birthday Cards, figuring it must be somebody’s birthday soon. And I was just as well stocking up. ‘I’m waiting for yer offsales tae open.’

‘I didnae mean that. I meant you can’t wait here.’

‘How no? I’m a customer, amn’t I? Where dae yeh keep yer Jammy Dodgers?’

A bald headed man in a blue nylon jacket came into the shop. He glanced over at us and then the guy behind the counter.  ‘Twenty Regal,’ he addressed the guy behind the docket and put his dog lead in the other hand so he could search through his pockets.

‘You want a paper here, pal?’ I shouted at him and pointed at the rack.

‘A Daily Record,’ he said in a gruff voice.  

I pulled one out and strolled up to the counter and handed it to him. ‘The rolls are oer there.’ Hitching my thumb back the way I’d come I gave him some advice, ‘If you want somethin tae wipe yer arse, they’ve got The Sun up there.’

He nodded to show he’d heard, sticking his chin out as he got his change, glancing down at his hand to check it. Putting the dog lead in his left hand, he swerved around me and pulled the door letting in a whoosh of cold air and rain. I wandered back to where they stacked the paper, with the Guardian still in my hand. Looking over the headlines, the Asian shopkeeper was blocking my way. He’d the kind of look the bouncers in the Oasis used to give me on his face.

‘You need to go,’ he said, but added in that familiar upbeat tone, ‘You can come back later. Anytime!’  

I kept my head down. Re-read the headline that pronounced Boris Johnston an imbecile or that might just have been my reading of it. ‘Aye, nae bother,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m still shoppin.’

‘I’ll help you,’ he said, guiding me by the arm towards the door.

Keeping a grip of my paper, I slowed at the checkout, where they’d arranged packets of cheap soon-to-out-of-date biscuits for thirty pence a packet. A grey haired, stocky women bustled into the shop. She’d her hood up, but found time to put on her red lipstick and paint on her eyebrows.

She looked me up and down, as I’d looked her up and down. ‘Morning,’ she wittered in a cheery voice.

‘Is it?’ I replied.

And she chuckled, which made her almost young. But she was only in for a soft roll, the kind that was best for people with no teeth. I played the gentleman getting her a plastic bag, wrapping it up and presenting it too her. If I’d been better dressed, I imagined she’d have probably propositioned me. Giving her one of my trademark winks, I held open the door as she left.

‘You need to leave too,’ said Ali.

He’d come from behind the counter. The two of them stood together like a commission for racial equality.

I appealed to their higher conscience. ‘But whit about that last guy? You served him fags?’

‘He was over sixteen,’ replied Ali. ‘We can serve tobacco at any time.’

I forgot when argument I was trying to make. ‘But you ne’er checked.’

‘Never checked, what?’

‘Whether he was sixteen?’ I had them on a technicality. ‘Yeh, ne’er know.’

‘Look Jim,’ Ali’s colleague folded his arms in a passive-aggressive way. ‘We can phone the police.’

‘Aye, I’m sure you could. And they’d come and dae me fer shopping.’

‘No, they’d come and dae yeh for drunk driving.’

‘But I’m no drunk. You said I cannnae buy any booze until ten o’clock.’ I looked at the clock above the till. ‘No long noo. I’ll tell yeh, whit I’ll dae.’ I pulled two scrunched up twenty pound notes out of my housecoat pocket and put them on the counter.  ‘Stick a wee bottle of somethin in a plastic bag. It doesnae really matter whit it is. And keep the change. That’s whit we call win-win. You’ll get rid of me. And naebody will be any the wiser—I can tell you honestly, I’m no a plain clothes officer.’

They’d a heated argument in Urdu. Ali swept up the cash. He went behind the counter and picked up a bottle and his colleague held out a blue plastic bag. Hustling me out the shop, I stood outside in the rain and had a peek inside at the gold top of a bottle of Buckfast. Not my favourite tonic wine, but it was a miserable day and I needed a pick up.