Since returning from holiday near the sea, I have really wanted to try cooking mussels. Today I decided to indulge this mild fascination with crustaceans, and headed over to Morrisons (favourite supermarket of the pop group Take That, though I have never once seen any one of the members in there). The man at the fish counter told me how to prepare the mussels, giving me an unnerving crash-course on the extensive necessary shell testing you have to to avoid poisoning yourself. The amount of effort it took to prepare them was a revelation in itself. I had also been surprised how relatively cheap a big bag of mussels were as I’d always thought they were a bit of a delicacy. Although after my chat with the fishmonger, I would soon realise the real expense is more to do with the number of supplementary things you need to make a decent sauce. This expense would also be compounded when I got to the check-out queue. As I pulled out my wallet, I ended up dropping a coin. Typically, it hit my foot and rolled off, losing itself the jungle of other people’s queuing legs. And typically out of all the coins it could have possibly been, I had lost a pound – the second most valuable of the sterling coin family.
I had a few little glances, but to no avail. To have a more thorough exploration would have meant compromising my place in the queue, and rummaging around people’s feet, which seemed like an indignity not necessarily carrying much promise of success. Begrudgingly, I wrote the money off, paid for my goods and traipsed toward the exit. And as before I’d even left the building, the realisation hit me that I had forgotten to buy any fish stock, so I would have to take my carrier bag back to the car and start again. I don’t know why I always feel obliged to get rid of the goods I have already purchased before I can re-enter a shop. I just have a strange paranoia that I would be a suspected shoplifter if I didn’t, which would be of social embarrassment to me in a public retail space. Silly really, when you remember the purpose of being issued a receipt is solely for proof of purchase.
So I returned to the store and grabbed a box of fish stock, heading back to the checkout. I did not wish to join the same queue as before in case the checkout girl recognised me as the forgetful dimwit I was, so I joined the next one along behind a man waiting to pay for a pre-packaged sandwich. This turned out to be a shrewd move on two counts – firstly I had joined behind a man who was waiting to pay for a single pre-packaged sandwich so the queue instantly became shorter than it looked. But even more impressively, I could see my pound coin on the floor just a few meters ahead. As I slowly shuffled up the queue alongside the fish stock on the conveyer belt, I waited in anticipation to retrieve my gold nugget, praying that none of the other shoppers in front of me would spot it before I could get to it. Luckily, no-one did and when I reached the coin I surreptitiously pounced on it like a tiger. Although it wasn’t quite as discreet as I’d hoped - as I bent down, I made one of those involuntary groaning noises that sometimes occur when you get to a certain age and start stretching, standing or bending. This new development of vocal accompaniment to minor exertions was both a surprise and worry for me. If I am groaning like this at the mere age 31, lord knows what noises I’ll be making at 61. At this rate, it’ll sound like I’m doing a weird one man re-enactment of the fabled scene from “When Harry Met Sally”.
To add to my embarrassment, the checkout girl rung my fish stock through and gave me a disconcerting look, whilst asking “Is that everything?” The enquiry may appear rather innocent when read from a page, but had she given the same line of questioning to the single-item buying gentleman and his pre-packaged sandwich? Oh no – of course not. Buying a single item is fine if it is a pre-packed sandwich. But apparently there is something deeply odd about a man who just wants a box of fish stock. What on Earth was she thinking? Did she believe I was friends with the sandwich man, and we would step on to the car park together – him tucking in to the convenient bread-based snack he’s just purchased, and me standing alongside him, crumbling cubes of dehydrated fishy flavourings into my gob? What sort of sea-life obsessed weirdo did she think I was? Oh well. Who cares? At least I had retrieved my pound. This would sweeten the bitter pill of any unnatural-looking fish stock eccentricities that may have been levelled at me.
The mussels were ok, but if I am honest they failed to leave me sated. They had seemed like such a big bag when I bought them. But for starters, the fishmonger had scared the living hell out of me with his stern tutorial, and during my rigorous safety check on the shells I probably discarded many more mussels than I needed to, just through paranoid caution. And when I’d finally finished prevaricating and actually cooked the mussels, the little bits of Gieger-esque meat were actually a lot smaller than I’d anticipated. In fact they were so tiny compared to their vast shell cups, it rather reminded me of trying to find the clitoris. But enough of the sentimentality from bygone years. The point was that to appease my appetite I had to follow my main dish with sandwiches and a rather too healthy (or indeed unhealthy) portion of cheesecake. So when my friend contacted me to tell me he was going for a drink and a curry in the town I was keen to join, but certainly only the former seemed of any appeal. Which brings me to my next point. When someone invites you to catch a bus into town for a drink and a curry, surely it is safe to assume that the activities would occur in that order. Drink first, curry later. Surely that’s the English way isn’t it? Not my friends. They must be continental or something. I joined them in town just as they were heading to the curry house. I can’t emphasise enough – I wanted drink not food. Yet I didn’t feel comfortable going to a curry house just to order drink. Maybe my ideologies are all askew, but this is something that appears much weirder to me than standing in queue to buy fish-stock. And this is how I found myself standing all alone in a pub, self-consciously supping from my pint. Which I pretty much did until the last bus home. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but the barmaid I had been set up in an ill-conceived date with in this previous entry was working. And she kept walking past. What must I have looked like, standing in the middle of busy Saturday-night town-centre pub, drinking completely by myself? The best I can hope for is that I appeared so un-popular I am completely bereft of any friends who I can call and meet up with, even on a Saturday night. I’d seem weird, but at least I would pitiable. But what if she thinks I am only going there to watch her, like some discomforting lonely obsessive? This would no longer look pitiable. This would be a whole new level of weirdness.
Could have been worse I suppose. At least I didn’t drop any coins and start groaning when she walked past. Or have a powdery residue of fish stock smeared across my lips.
