Shopping

It was late afternoon, and it was time to go shopping. First of all we head to Aldi for fresh meet for the bulldogs.  Buddy, Bruno and I are waiting out the front in Johnston Street while Sam shops in Aldi. The sun shines its long afternoon rays and they warm us with their gentle heat.

A guy with a beefy arse wearing Birkenstocks and his female friend in an extremely short, figure hugging skirt cycle passed, I’m not really sure how either one of them was managing.

A cute guy with a sweet face in black shorts with sexy legs comes passed with a black Italian Greyhound, I think its name was Tim. Bruno tries to play with it. I smile at the guy, kind of instinctively. He smiles back. I watch him walk away.

A guy in western boots walks passed, like some gay cowboy all decked out in black from his fancy hat to his tight jeans, with fancy white and green boots up to his knees. I listen for the clink of the spurs. His eyes are semi-closed, I am pretty I know what this cowboy has been doing home on the range.

Sam appears again with shopping bags slung over each shoulder. He hands one shopping bag to me.

Next, it is people food from Woolies.

As we approach Woolies, a 30 something chick with dark hair and an obviously red flush to her complexion, walks towards us on Smith Street exclaiming loudly, seemingly to whoever will listen,

“I do huge fucken business for everybody in this fucken world, who wants my fucken business now! Woo-hoo!” she wails. She does a victory hand gesture by punching the sky with both her fists, one, two, smiling more than broadly. If she’d thrown her head back and brayed at the sun, she didn’t, I wouldn’t have been surprised. With barely a tooth in her head and what teeth she did have were black. I keep walking, I don’t look back.

She starts singing, “I Will Always Love You,” at the top of her voice, somewhere in the back ground.

Buddy, Bruno and I waiting out the front of Woolies while Sam shops.

The stick thin homeless chick, I call her the whippet, who always talks to me comes and sits right on top of me, saying hello, stinking of alcohol. She is like a desolate jockey always wrapped up in a hooded puffer jacket, seemingly many sizes too big for her. She pushes her belongings up against the shopping bags I have leaning against the buildings front wall, as though she is not completely aware of what she is doing. Yay! I like her and all, but seriously, boundaries. She spills her bottle of red wine she is carrying in a paper bag everywhere as she goes to sit down and has to move to the wall on the other side of the supermarket doors due to the red lake that has formed next to my right leg, right where she was attempting to sit. It is like being hit with smelling salts when you are unconscious (I have never been hit with smelling salts when I have been unconscious, I have never been unconscious, but go with me) such is the strength of the aroma.

Our soloist, around the corner just out of sight in Smith Street, follows up I Will Always Love You with Band On The Run, off key, again at the top of her voice. 

The Whippet asks me if I had any change? She always asks me if I have any change, which I never do. (I never bring my wallet when we take the dogs for a walk) Then, I thought she asked me if I wanted to go into a raffle, just out of the blue. It seemed like the oddest thing that she would ask. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her, as she has never asked me anything like that before, and I make her say it again.  “Do you want to buy some acid?”

She’d never asked me anything like that either. “Oh, no thanks,” I say. “May be 20 years ago.” I laugh nervously.

I slide down the wall and start to write my journal on my phone. (I write a lot of my journals/blog squatting in front of shops with the dogs)

Sam gets some amazing deal on fresh chicken legs, 70 cents a kilo, so he heads back to Aldi to return the chicken he had just bought from them.  I say they won’t let him return fresh meat, and he says, “Watch me.”

An old man stops to chat. The poor old guy has a stick and looks the worse for wear, with his alabaster legs covered in blotches and dotted with scabs. He moves his mask to speak and as he is spitting somewhat, I stand up from my squatting position so I am out of direct aim of his spittle. He tells me he had a black pug named Mabel, long since died. He tells me the bulldogs are magnificent. He just stands and gazes down at Buddy and Bruno and I am pretty sure he is lonely, so I talk about everything that comes to mind and when I run out of things to say, he eventually smiles and says that it was lovely chatting.

The toothless chick around the corner is still belting out the numbers.

It looks like a social worker stops to chat to the Whippet. He crouches down and chats to her. I wonder if he is not a social worker at all and in fact Mr Big supplying the acid?

But then, Sam appears back having successfully returned the chicken to Aldi. 

Sam hands me my bags to carry, and takes Bruno’s lead out of my hand. I am loaded up like a pack horse, again. I got one of those granny trolleys with wheels in which we could wheel our groceries home, but Sam won’t even entertain the thought. I bring it up again, as my shoulders hurt under the weight of the purchases, but Sam shakes his head and walks off in front of me.

We’re home just in time for 6pm misery hour. Must watch that.