Everybody Had Magic Towels

Joy. The first 'customer' of the day turned out to be a rather hunched & bedraggled old woman. As she shuffled towards me, extending a boney & somewhat grubby finger, she licked her lips and began to mumble the opening salvo of her spellbinding sales patter.

"Ooh, young man. Would ye buy a lucky charm?"

Since her affected Irish accent was startlingly rubbish I began to wonder if she was an 'ironic' gypsy, a very mature student inhabiting the body of this grotesque cliché in the name of a performance 'art' project. I was awoken from my mind-musings by more mumbling and the mesmerising & disturbing trail of saliva that ran from her top lip down to her wispy-haired chin. Then, all at once, she shook her head and the extraordinary spit string proceeded to wrap itself around her entire body as she came over all Wonder Woman and began to spin round & round, faster & faster, until she disappeared in a puff of smell.

Or maybe I was still daydreaming.

One of the many trials of this job is having to put up with the parade of nutters that stream through the shop door trying to sell me mountains of their unwanted, but brightly coloured refuse. I may have been naïve, but I always thought that I should be the one flogging shite to unsuspecting idiots. Just because I work in a shop and I am a captive audience, it doesn't mean I have lost all sense of taste & sanity.

"No thank you. I am very sorry, but I shall have to decline your very generous offer, Miss Spanish exchange student, of owning your very latest gouache & vomit on cardboard work, for the measly sum of a day's wages. It would indeed be a steal, but unless I can dispose of you immediately after purchase with impunity and thus increase the value of my investment, or at least remove one more annoyance from my life, I will have to say, "No! A thousand times, no! Now, be off with you and never darken my door again!"


Currently listening: Girlfriend by Matthew Sweet