I am working at Battles shop, a local family run business in my village. I am walking around and checking the stock on the shelves then move onto the till. I am then serving a customer and notice a shopping bag by his side. Perhaps he brought this in from another shop. I realise I am on the wrongside of the counter and have to reach over to retrieve one. I say 'And you brought that one in with you yes?' The shopping bag contained a box of Jaffa Cakes.'Yes' he said ' I had them in my garage'. We began to exchange small talk and he told me that he makes wooden houses for a living. I thought of all the hippies living in makeshift huts and homes, ignoring failing breastfed Irish society and its coercive chains and greedy red tape, despising modern culture and what it deems as conventional and normal, which nearly always transpires as lucrative for somebody else. Suddenly a man in a suit enters the scene. He looks like a stock FBI agent from terrible American daytime television. He doesn't look at me and barks 'Is this place safe?'. I told him the only harm around this humdrum cul de sac village, were everyday is a dress rehearsal for reality, is self harm. What we wouldn't give for a terrorist attack. He scanned the room with an observant and controlled eye, in charge of some secret information, the hidden beat of muscle memory unfolding and slotting itself into place behind his faceless dead eyed demeanour, waiting for the silent poised terrorist to jump out from the broccoli. He darted out the door and I ran to the window to raise the curtain and could see a van full of agents scanning the area then to spin and speed off down the vacant road. I return to the wooden house maker and resume to flex my customer service muscle. As he leaves a thought awoke from the bowels of a forgotten history class and I shout 'Sure didn't we invent the Crannog!' with a stumbling manic tongue tied pride. 'A what?' a startled girl to my side uttered. I told her crannog's were wooden structures dating back to 17th century Ireland which housed extended families, was used for hunting and fishing and acted as a sanctuary for those in trouble and in need of help. I began to think of sides and old ways.
DAY: 18th August 2012
Wake up to the cacophonous noise of multiple babies wailing like some sort of surround sound communal event of suffering, each wail triggers another like a set of sympathetic dominos. A galvanised prison crew uniting in song to mourn the death of their beloved leader. The sound is so intense and builds like some tawdry 80's paracetomol ad.
This housing estate is strange and depressing. The streets and playgrounds are empty but you can hear and feel the heat of unknown lives behind endless gray concrete walls and faceless windows. Thwarted dams at the brink of bursting, water seeping through the cracks. Two nights ago Katarina and I were sitting outside drinking lemon and ginger tea with milk when we heard a married couple argue. The wife called the husband a drunk, chastising him for being out for hours and leaving her with the kids, that its her birthday, that she hates him and was the biggest mistake of her life, that he has drained her and taken all her best years. We were speechless and could only laugh out of our nervousness. The argument had the same beat and rhythm of a soap opera. I never thought these scenes existed. Thinking they were only vomitted out of the pen by some mediocre Coronation Street hack. Perhaps they are magpied out of real life?
Walk to the cornershop to update my tube card. See a tabloid paper depicting a bruised and scarred woman. The story was about a British soldier returning from duty to find out that his wife was having an affair, so he decided to maim her and 'make her ugly' so no man would touch her again.
Walk to the fruit and veg shop to buy the contents of a laughable stir fry. I am wearing shorts and receive strange glances from the shop owner. It is as if my very presence is erasing the moral fortress he has spent a lifetime trying to maintain. What does he think I will be actually doing with the food?
Eat stir fry. Get the 73 from Essex Road to Kings Cross.
At work and I hear my fellow employees talk about the mystery shopper. A person that supposedly comes into your shop and secretly judges you on the presentation of the place, the service and overall mood. They tell us that if the branch is successful we will all get extra cash come wages day. A carrot on a string.
'Jesus is a mystery shopper,
buyer beware.
Like an uninvited stroke.
Descending from the air.'
I walk past a table and can hear Irish accents. Fills me with despair. Two rich Dublin girls sqwark with their gummy mouths, brandishing the letter 'S' like a stuttering socialite snake, Rachel Allen knock offs whose life long ambition is to make the perfect homemade guacamole. It's like they are bred on a farm sponsored by the Irish Rugby Football Union and Debenhams, fodder to the chinless rugby elite and incestous squash players.
I think back on the idea of 'Rich Irish people' and it sounds like an oxymoron. Half pregnant. Sensual Pope.
Walk to the bathroom. Not on lunch break. Bliss. Man walks past and catches me in mid yawn. He stares with arch eyebrows at my features, trying to work out my cryptic facial code. My face is covert braile and his eyes are hands.
I've got debilitating tiredness. Throwing and dragging my body around like veal jogging through water.
I take too long in the bathroom and wonder would anybody notice. I wonder how many people put their dignity on the line each day by saying they shat themselves, just for a few moments more of stolen freedom?
I walk the shop floor, emitting a low whine.
It's so hot I am nearly hallucinating. The kind of weather were you'll accept responsibility for a crime you didn't commit just so you can leave the room. Cool your forehead on the handcuffs.
Talk to the female chef and tell her that the oven she is working with smells like Christmas. She tells me that smell is actually oven cleaner. The spirit of Christmas in a bottle.
Talk to a fellow employee about future plans.I bring up the most common question in job interviews: "Where do you see yourself in 12 months time?" I am intriqued to hear what she will say. You can never say what you really think. You always have to tell your employer what they want to hear. "I see myself here with you Brad, as we are married to twin blonde stunners, who are outside salivating in our matching Ferrari's, as we laugh and engage each other in a never ending high five of perpetual bliss." Never say what you really think. Dead in a big occultist car crash, found bloody in a ditch with a face full of ram sperm. They just don't want to hear it.
Walk past a grief stricken, anorexic Jeremy Clarkson look a like, followed by a bloated, blimp like David Icke. Think about people that actually become celebrity look a likes for hire. Fulfilling? Then started to think about a company that would provide metaphysical look a likes of celebrities instead, depicting their inner state of life rather then there PR constructed nonsense image. Instead of "Bruce Forsyth" turning up to the christmas party they would just send a rotting, wood wormed broken kitsch clock.
They still haven't given me my name badge. They have given me a standby badge that says 'Jo'. Everybody calls me Jo now and I actually answer to it. Must inform my broadband provider.
On my break. Think about what Josefine said the other day about grandchildren and how it would be great to live near home and be around her parents. I begin to think about how my father will probably pass away before he can meet mine. Fills me with sadness.
Look at my fringe in the window. Looks like an ox bow lake.
Next I see a defeated Jeremy Paxman.
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