2.6.11 Horse Trading

The man in the Co-op had a problem, and he successfully 'transferred' it to those around him, including me.  Minding my own business in the bread aisle, I suddenly became aware of a vile smell.  With the Doppler effect, the sound comes and goes.  There is no equivalent for a smell emitted by a moving object, and the effect lingers on.

I clocked him moving away from me (not taking his smell with him, as already noted) and heading for the milk.  It was difficult to place the smell, but it was truly awful.  He was wearing a checked shirt with mud splattered on it, brown jeans and boots.  He had clearly just finished work, and was not an office worker!

The Co-op is not known for its efficiency (nor for its value for money, or excellent product range or helpful staff) so it was no surprise to find a long queue at the kiosk and a long queue (at which progress had stalled) at the one normal checkout in use.  As I stood watching the confusion regarding a kerfuffle over a void transaction, I quickly realised that the man in question was two people in front of me in the queue for the kiosk.  Then it hit me - not the smell, that was already well established - the type of smell.  Horse shit.

I considered the options.  Either his natural body odour was horse-like, or he was a manual labourer who probably mucked out horses; or, he was a horse.  Seeing as I've never seen a horse walk on two feet, I decided that he was human.  At the same time I wondered if the mud on his shirt was something else.

The queue was moving rather too slowly for comfort.  It was strange to be amongst others who could not have failed to notice the smell as well, yet say nothing.  I was finally pleased to see the back of the horseman, and got to the till myself, to be irritated by Rita.  In summary, it was an awful lot of aggro for some mushrooms and some Mini Magnums. [I've always thought that the plural of Magnum should actually be Magna]

Leaving the shop, I knocked into a stupidly positioned box of something green.  It was a trip hazard disguised as a display of something edible - cress, probably.  I did not stop to pick it up.  As I walked back past the shopfront, I wondered if my rebellious act was to be severely punished, as I saw Lee Van Cleef looking intently at me from the driver's seat of a parked car.  However, as I could not hear the music from a fancy timepiece, and couldn't see a gun with an extended barrel poking out of the window, I realised he was a lookalike and that I was safe.  The fresh air was lovely.

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