Stress in the Afternoon

Yesterday, a fat, bald man in a mustard yellow turtleneck sauntered up to the counter with a pile of six Last of the Summer Wine DVDs and a copy of Model Airplane Monthly. He licked his lips incessantly and asked for two copies of his receipt. For the rest of the afternoon, he wandered around the shop, bringing small bargain buys to the register and repeating the procedure over and over again. A book about the Pyramids. A packet of pens. A bookmark with a Celtic pattern on it. Rinse and receipt, rinse and receipt.

The customers are the key to any retail job. It is their cameos that separate one hour from the next; their smiles and outbursts that turn that frown upside down or leave you with a severe case of the afternoon doldrums. The staff are there for better or worse; Vinyl Bitch and Riot Wmmmn, unglamorous as they are. But you never who which spacey patron is going to amble into your life and blow your book-themed mind right off its shoulders.

Take, for example, Harried Mother at One Fifteen. She wheeled her pram up to the counter; one of those cumbersome vehicles with wheels the size of tyres and probably a small engine hidden under the seat. The younger child sat inside, a blonde bubby of about two with snot dripping down both nostrils. He wore a dinosaur outfit and seemed unhappy about it. Beside the pram stood the older child; a girl with a beaming smile and the kind of wide eyed jubilation who might just tie you up and read you Little Women until you passed out. Harried Mother dropped an armful of books onto the counter just as baby bink started to cry.

“Mama, can I give Baby Jason a suck from my lollipop?” The Cherub Girl asked, pulling the orange Chuppa Chup out of her mouth and offering it, Misery-style to the screaming dinosaur baby. HM grabbed the offending candy and handed it back to Cherub, resulting in the dinosaur baby to intensify his screaming level to “everyone in the shop turn around and look” level. He reached out desperately for the forbidden confectionary, clawing with his little arms and straining to yank himself out of his pram straps. His sister took a passive step away from the pram and stuck the offending article smugly back in her mouth. Two old ladies were already queuing up behind this motel crew, pretending to look politely at birthday cards and averting their mortified eyes.

Baby Jason let out another embittered howl and HM, juggling credit card and a vibrating iPhone whipped around and hissed at her daughter “See what you’ve done now, Elizabeth? Stupid.” She then pulled a Julia Donaldson book out of the pile and, with a final venomous look towards the poor girl, told me in clipped tones that “I don’t think we’ll be needing this one today, thank you.”

Elizabeth’s face froze and then, somewhat predictably, burst into tears. She threw the orange Chuppa Chup on the tiled floor where it smashed into a few sad little pieces.

“Mama is the F word! The F word!” she screamed and ran out of the shop. The two old ladies stared after her with their mouths open. Baby Jason howled even louder and strained towards the orange remnants on the tiles below. Somehow, the wretched woman and I had managed to complete the transaction and I tried to give her one of those empathetic “what’s a mother to do?” smiles. As if in response, she reached into her bag and pulled out a packed of Benson & Hedges.

“You never think it’s going to be like this and then it is.” She sighed. “Thank god for these, eh? Oh, love your cardie.” She winked at me and wheeled the screaming child away. The two old women sidled up to the counter, stepping gingerly around the Chuppa fragments.

“Mums can’t be doing it these days,” one of them explained. “It’s all too soft, that big woman on the TV and her naughty stool. Sometimes they just need a good smack on the bum.” Behind them, Mustard Yellow stood quietly, another bargain book in his hand. He licked his lips expectantly.

Two days later, I ruined the very same cardigan by putting it through drier cycles at the local laundrette. It shrunk to half its size.

On the way home, I bought a packet of Benson & Hedges.