It's the same room but everything's different

[lizblackdog]

The daffodils are out, the squirrels have arrived in force, the foxes are fucking and the other morning I was nearly hit in the head by one of two wrens, so busy fighting over tree rights that they never saw me at all. The grass has taken on a shine as new shoots start insinuating themselves among the old crap that's been there all winter, and Squish dog wants to eat it all. It's officially spring here.

One should never go shopping when hungry, yet it's often the only time I'm motivated enough to bother. So I end up buying way more than I can easily carry home, not to mention more strawberry and white chocolate muffins than any sensible person ought to need. Also discovered Italian ground coffee in 1lb packs for 50p each, which is insane, so I had four packs as well as the muffins and the dogs' chicken parts and pork ribs.

Our Asda has automatic self-checkout scanners, but I refuse to use them. They issue orders at you and catalogue your shopping in a synthesised voice. When it says "Two point four kilos of baking potatoes" I can't stop my brain hearing "Exterminate!" and frankly, it freaks me the fuck out. So I joined the queue on the only human-operated till, despite the woman in front of me who was either recruiting an army or feeding a family of teenagers. We got talking about the bargain coffee and the strawberry muffins and she ended by offering me a ride home, which goes to show you should always follow your instincts in the matter of shopping queues. She won't read this and I thanked her a lot at the time, but I'll thank her here again: Blonde lady with the SUV and the teenagers, you made my night.

My mother's friend Ossie died unexpectedly this week. He used to work the checkout at Asda as well - sweet guy, but utterly incapable of working a checkout and a conversation at the same time. He made shopping with my mother wryly entertaining, as I'd stand there listening to the two of them gossiping for what felt like hours while the queue behind us grew steadily longer and grumpier as their frozen food melted, unmoving. You have to admire someone who attains that level of cheerful, oblivious unhurriability even when it irritates the fuck out of you.

This rambling, mostly pointless post is dedicated to his memory.

Comments

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

Heh. In fact, I was cycling through the Crowded House section of my playlist while I wrote this, and different lines from different songs kept suggesting themselves as the right post title. It was very nearly "Here Comes Mrs Hairy Legs", but I decided to save that for some future post.

I've loved the Brothers Finn dearly ever since Split Enz.

[mudshark58.livejournal.com]

I still think Split Enz' Waiata (Corroboree in Oz) is one of the more perfect pop albums of all time.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

I admit I don't have it as an entire album, though I have a lot of the tracks from it in mp3 format. Thank you for drawing my attention to this deficiency in my music hoard. I shall do something about that very soon.