Running away …. a sign of the times…oh did I mention sex & drugs

Yesterday morning I prepared a shopping list and fled into town before the cleaning brigade arrived to ‘do the house over’. I had a list of tools and things to buy, to complete the plunge pool AND I had to take the car in for a service…. god I hate car service day. With the new car it only takes 3 hours so I can’t legitimately demand a ‘courtesy car’ . The result is I have to sit and wait for the ‘courtesy bus’ to drop me off at the local shopping mall. What the courtesy bit is about I have never understood…but hey! there are lots of things about life I don’t get (like enough sex…. see my AO rated blog). There I am, forced to wait with a group of people I have nothing in common with, scratching my brain to create small talk so that my lurking doesn’t make me prime candidate for the police identikit drawing of the person on tonight TV’s “Police are looking for the following psychopath’.

Now the courtesy of the courtesy bus bit, is probably, that we all don’t gang up and throttle the bus driver who is always female and is happy to waste our time, chatting up some guy from the workshop, who probably should be working on my car… but I don’t want to be bitter about ruining her sex life. The bus, well it is one of those 12 seater mini buses with the windows tinted enough so the contents can only just be seen as vaguely humanoid, and you know you look like it is a group from the local old persons home on a chaperoned shopping outing. Bugger I don’t know why we aren’t all given zimmer frames and go for the total demented look. Ms Driver treats the whole thing like she is single-handedly flying a boeing 747, we only miss out on the in flight catering; which she could do with her 2 free hands as she seems to be steering the bus by use of her knees jambed up against the steering wheel… she is very big on hand gestures, or could be just drying her nail polish.

Don’t know why I am always the last to be dropped off. Some-one could be wanting to go to Saturn and me only two blocks but it is always ‘two blocks via Saturn’.

SEGUE WARNING: Apparently Saturn is in my moon, and I am advised to buy one ticket in something … and my lucky colour is cocoa.

As the last one on the bus the driver decides I need cheering up so she asks me what I have planned for the day ….. I want to say ‘well a quick whip round the universe in a clapped out mini bus driven by a a failed beautician sounds appealing’. I just grunt. I tumble off the bus at the local shopping mall…I’m looking for a copy of A Farewell to Arms: Hemingway. Three bookshops later, and you have no idea how obscure Hemingway is to your basic gum chewing check out chick. You have to ask because I find any shop that operates any sort of cataloguing system uses a system that is totally beyond any logic …. It may start out alphabetically but by the time you are up to mid way through the C’s suddenly the next shelf starts with H or you are into the decoupage section. To be fair to all the check out chicks they did all say, ‘what have you got planned for the day’ and one seemed that genuinely interested that I thought, if I make my day sound anymore exciting than hanging out in the decoupage section, she will probably chuck the job in and follow me home.

Shop 4 does have a copy of the book but ’she’ looks at me in the eye and says ‘oh it is a special edition $69.95′ … ‘how special’, I said ‘handwritten?’ didn’t so much as crack a smile, she didn’t even ask me what I had planned for the day…so that was me shopped out with hours to fill. I took in a movie. Miss Pettigrew lives for a Day: recommended. But while we were all queueing, Oh you have to imagine this: 3 ticket sales booth, only one manned, with a big sign saying ‘under training’ … should have said ‘under water’, a queue of 20-30 blue rinsed old biddies, all of who had the correct change somewhere in their purse … what is it with old people they dag along, seem genuinely surprised when money is requested. “hey mum get your money out before you get to the ticket box’ then there is coin and lint spread and counted… the movie is about to kick off and the queue aint going anywhere. I usually try to keep away from people en masse, owing to an uncontrollable urge to hug people I don’t know, around the neck. The urge becomes particularly strong when you have to listen to conversations, that make small talk seem monumental…. this queue was a particularly fine group of trivia-meisters.

I was taken by a sign on the ticket booth; it said ‘Management reserves the right to refuse entry to anyone…without explanation’ Wow. WTF type of people do they get at the multiplex….? You don’t get kicked out for breathing popcorn breathe over the person sitting beside you, or giving a running monologue about your illnesses or the film plot. Booting the back of the seat in front seems ok, and talking on your mobile is practically de rigueur .. so what do you have to be or do to be chucked out. Anyway the movie was good. I collected the car, the matre d’ of car handing over said ‘and what have you got planned for the day’ … I was tempted to say ‘well I plan to come up with a cure for cancer before afternnon tea time and then perhaps have a sliver of Battenberg with a cup of Earl Grey, before I put my mind to solving the global warming crisis……..” Get a life mate.

In actual fact I returned home and did some more training for my drinking career with the mother and dorter neighbors…. and they don’t even drink, during the sunlight hours, so I had to practice on myself… I am still planning to run away: but where?

~ by attributi on May 15, 2008.