Round the corner from my house, sitting in the middle
of a dreary (looking even more dreary in today's non stop drizzle) housing
estate, is a parade of shops.
The Parade has
been there at least thirty years - there's the newsagents that forever will be
known as Bunce’s, even though it hasn’t been Bunce’s since about 1989 when it
changed to Stars and is now called something else like Quik News. Next to Bunce's is a hairdressers. it's a
pretty random place to have a hairdressers and I can't imagine who would go
there. My mother did once - 'never again', she said through the kind of tears
that can only be induced by a God-awful haircut that means you'll have to spend
the next six months hiding under a hat, 'never again!'
Then there's the Supa Price Kutters that sells
everything, but marks it all up by about three times the price of what you'd
find it for in the supermarket. They
employ strange times of operation in that place - it opens at what feels like
11.55am and then closes at 12pm. Quick-E-Mart it is not. I am foraging for
vegetables - as it's such a miserable day I don't know if I can be bothered to
get soaking wet walking into town but I am all out of anything tasty and
nutritious to eat. They have a decent, fresh-ish bag of mixed salad and some
ok, if a bit squidgy tomatoes and some nice red onions but everything else is
dreadful - the carrots have the feel of a squeaky dog toy, the lettuce is brown
and the green beans are mottled with rot. Next to me is a poor little old lady
desperately trying to find some fresh green beans and failing horribly.
This shop also
sells, randomly, a big selection of pet food and own brand fizzy drinks, bird
tables, baked Alaska and Findus crispy pancakes, bleach, some organic lime
surface cleaner, big bags of Bombay (Mumbai??) mix, cheap make-up and also has a DVD rental
service. After I’ve bought some earthy
looking spuds and a red onion that will probably turn out to be spoiled, I go
into Bunce’s, where something a little bit strange and quite funny happens.
There's two teenage girls in there with someone who
looks like their mother. But there seems to be some weird, Freaky Friday thing
going on. The elder teenage girl is saying:
'what is it you want, then?'
The mother is stood at the magazine racks, her face
covered by the pages of an open magazine, she's totally engrossed. She mumbles
something inaudible to the teenage girl, but I hear it as: 'I dunno,'
'What?!' the teenage girl barks, in the manner of a
posh dog trainer shouting, 'heel!' to an unruly puppy.
'I said I don't know,' says the woman. 'I haven't seen
anything,'
'WHAT?' bellows the girl again, and slides over. She
tugs at the sleeve of the woman's coat.
'I said I haven't seen anything,' says the woman.
'Come on then,' says the girl, flicking her
hair over her shoulder, all exasperated, and they leave the shop. But my Bunce’s
experience is not over yet!
My sister has
left a load of her art stuff at dad's house. Today I decided I was going to
have a go at being creative (anything to detract from what I am actually
supposed to be doing, which is *cringe* writing a novel.) I realised
that when I cleared out the old stuff I'd thrown away some of the more useful
things like palettes and little wooden spatulas. I thought that the Post office
(also sells a vast variety of knitting / sewing stuff) along the parade might
have a cheap oil paint set with a palette. They didn't, hence why I had gone
into Bunce’s.
'You looking for something?' asks the girl. She says
it in a way that suggests I'm on the rob. Her accent is a curious mix - half Pakistani, half the local, slangy
accent, so she drops her aitches and over-pronounces her K's.
I ask her if
they have a paint set.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says and marches to the front of the
shop, from where she produces a set of kids paints in primary colours that are
sitting in a plastic box.
‘Uhm, that’s not really what I was -’ I start to say.
‘I know
what you’re looking for,’ she says, and rattles the box in my face, like she’s
trying to say, ‘these, buy these, you want these,’
‘Uhm,
yeah, not really the paints but just a palette,’ I say.
‘Have you tried the post office?’ she demands.
I say that I have and thank her for her help, but I
don’t want the paints. I pay for my magazine and run.
On the way home, the two girls and the woman are
standing at the bus stop. The woman has adopted the posture of a teenage girl,
and is slurping from a Lucozade bottle, standing on one foot, the other bent at
the knee, the foot resting on the wall behind her.
‘Linda,’ says the youngest girl - it’s unclear if she’s
addressing the older girl or the woman, ‘do you know why I wanted this
magazine?’
I don’t hear the rest of the exchange - I am way past
the bus stop by then.
I’ve also had a driving lesson today. It didn’t go well, so I’ll be having to my
shopping at the Parade on rainy days for a while longer.
