everything in the sky

It was a banana-shaped maraca. It was a banana-shaped maraca and I wanted it.
It was in the back of a small shop named “All Things Percussion” and, to be fair, they’d lived up to their name.
The shopkeeper was large and slow and, I thought, perhaps a little drunk.
“‘s a funny thing,” he muttered, as he tried to ring my purchase up. “(Bloody thing’s curved, lookit the barcode, ‘s all bent.) ‘s a funny thing.”
“Is it?” I said, unsure.
“I used to have all of ‘em, see. A lot bunch of fruit… wotsits. Msracas. Ma. Racas.” He pinched his large, red nose thoughtfully, and gazed upward as if in search of inspiration.
“A whole fruit basket, see. Apples and pears and… thingies. Wotsits. Grapefruit, like. Maracas. All in a basket, right there,” he said, pointing vaguely in the direction I’d found the bright yellow instrument.
“Then one day, right, someone nicked ‘em. Someone stole ‘em all. All of ‘em. At once.”
I nodded, uncertain.
“They wandered in here, right. They came in here, bold as brass, right in the middle of the day. And - and this is genius, right - they brought fruit.”
He’d leaned forward now, whispering in conspiratorial, whiskey-soaked tones.
“They’d came in here and replaced them all, see. They replaced each apple wotsit, maraca, with an actual apple, so I wouldn’t notice. And bananas, and pears, and thingies. Wotsits. Grapefruits. One by bloody one. While I was watching. Right from here.”
He leaned back, pinched his nose again; stared at me, as if to make sure I grasped the fullness of the situation.
“Every damn piece. All of ‘em. They replaced the maracas with stuff from under their coat and then they just left. In broad daylight. Bold as brass.”
I just nodded.
“Amazing, really, in’t it,” he said. “I didn’t realise until I went to polish ‘em up that they were real fruit. And they just… walked outta here. With all my fruit maracas under their coat.”
He sniffed again, pinched his nose.
“‘Cept this one, I guess. Guess they didn’t have enough bananas. Still… it’s like the perfect crime, though, in’t it?”

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.

Sometimes when you cry ‘Havoc!’ and let loose the Dogs of War they just run around the yard for, like, 20 minutes and then sit on the porch licking their balls at the neighbours.
True story.