Summer fruits
She was one of the many urgent, dirty characters who seem to come out in the summertime in west-London. Whether she was one of the area’s many drug-addicts or simply mentally ill, it didn’t matter: she was in the line in front of me at our local grocery and she was taking ages. She’d tried to leave without paying, seemingly absent-mindedly, had accused the server of racism, and was now trying to pay with a movie-rental card. Having eventually organized payment (a cheque), she decided to leave. Without her groceries. As the person next in line in the queue, I was silently designated diplomat to this weird, angry, human island. “Uh, excuse me. Excuse me, ma’am, you’ve forgotten your stuff.” “Huh,” she grunted, still moving toward the doors. I moved forward to get her her bag. “You’ve forgotten your… pineapples?” Her groceries were pineapples. Just pineapples. 3 bags of them. “Huh.” She took them angrily and, I like to think, she went home. Along the way, I guess, she screamed at some birds. She flashed her breasts at a flowerpot. She voted Conservative. She did all the bizarre things the deranged seem to do to fill their day. Eventually, I like to believe, she got back to her small apartment. She pulled a key from some pocket in her duffel coat, unlocked her front door and headed into her kitchen. Constantly muttering, she took her pineapples, cradled in her arms, into her lounge. She climbed the step-ladder there and placed her precious cargo carefully (oh so carefully) on top of the immense, towering pile of pineapples sat waiting for her. “… good,” she muttered. “Good.” Then she descended, sat down in her rocking chair and, quiet and angry, she simply stared at them. She just sat and stared at her beautiful, yellow children.
