It is a microcosm of the freaks and geeks of this world who you might not otherwise see. Oh how they must have collectively rejoiced when supermarkets decided to open all night. Finally they could shop in peace and be left alone to count the grains of rice in each packet to see which was the best value for money.
I had to nip down and get some milk the other night and it was as if I had passed through some trans dimensional portal into the twilight zone on the drive down. Which I don’t think I did but hey, anything is possible when I’m alone in the passion wagon, distracted ever so slightly by my rocking to a beat from my playlist that I destroy with my unstoppable flows.
Mind you this was the time of night when the shelf packers are on duty and they’re hardly members of Mensa; one nearly wiped me out with a trolley despite my sticking to the same path all the way up the aisle and another lost half his trolley load of boxes in a fuck up of spectacular proportions. The cause of which was a relatively minor issue – the dude had all the stacking skills of an infant.
Then there are the customers. Now I’ve been disappointed on occasion to find my favourite item is out of stock but I have never quite felt the need to launch into a swear fest over it like the guy who couldn’t find his favourite jar of jam. Or the lady who appeared to be quite attractive until she went through her receipt line by line, checking that every item was in the bag and fair enough too, because those bloody checkout girls, they’re always stealing your stuff.
The funny thing is that once, long ago, I used to daydream about living a life where I would frequent supermarkets at bizarre times and would meet funky chicks there. Not funky as in unclean, but crazy girls. Not crazy like mental, but odd and not odd as in spastic, but quirky. Well they would have to be to be shopping at that time wouldn’t they?
I also had this warped idea that if I visited enough of them I could meet a sheila in some obscure second hand bookshop that only three people knew about and frequented. When that failed I took to the internet pretending to be the kind of guy who did his shopping in the wee small hours and frequented second hand bookshops.
It worked too. I started corresponding with a 17 year old girl who did the same and we ended up sending each other poems composed from our favourite bits of movie dialogue. Eventually we professed our love to each other through gratuitous use of emoticons. She lived in Shannon and seeing as I had no car at that time, borrowed some money from my flate mate and bought a bus ticket there.
When I arrived I was disappointed to find that she had lied to me; the supermarket in Shannon closed at 6pm, there was only one second hand bookstore and she was actually a he. We made love so as to not waste the bus fare but it was awkward, to say the least. Why can’t people just be honest?
Woodville has a lot of second hand bookstores, as DougalMac and I discovered whilst passing through on our way to the girls wedding last week. And going by the titles they have on display I’m guessing there are a good few folk who can’t wait for Woodville to a) get a supermarket and b) have it open 23 hours a day so they can do their shopping...
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