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| Where reluctant men spend their midlife Sunday mornings |
When I was young, single and
running free from all responsibilities, Sunday mornings meant three things:
late awakenings, extended breakfasts, and uninterrupted, hours-long reading of
newsprint to a soothing soundtrack of Music for Hangovers. There was little
movement involved, and certainly no heavy lifting.
Accumulating years brought with them all the trappings of what is comically termed a ‘settled’ lifestyle: three
females, all of them fucking nuts in their own sweet ways, and - most
burdensome of all - a garden. This latter symbol of having made it all the way
out of town pre-supposes hours of musing and relaxation in an idyllic,
naturally perfumed sub-utopia. In reality it’s a combination of rampant horny weeds,
stunted and tasteless vegetables, vicious and feral insects, and mud caused by daily
storms and perpetual drainage problems. To solve the latter problem, Mrs. Pop has
started laying down flagstones so we can step through the mire.
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| Aisle be buggered - paving away for no returns |
This has meant being recruited
for trips to Home Depot on Sunday morning – the sort of intra-marital chore you
can only avoid by feigning a mid-life crisis, inventing a 19-year-old mistress,
and driving off for good in the open-topped twatmobile you bought by cashing in
your only life insurance policy. I escaped Home Depot for several years by
maintaining that I was boycotting the company for contributing to George W
Bush’s 2004 election campaign, but my marriage has finally outlived this excuse.
One recent trip was endured, and
several heavy flagstones were hauled on to a trolley, heaved into the back of
the car, then removed at the other end ready to pave the soggy slope down the
side of our house. But it turned out we didn’t buy enough, so this past weekend
we went back for more. Back to Home Depot, filled with hundreds of other people
who don’t want to be there, resenting each other’s existence, facing off with
sullen expressions behind trolleys in aisles where only one can pass. How to
get out and away as quickly as possible is the only thought inside the head of
every single customer. At least it is for the remotely sane ones.
We loaded twelve very heavy
flagstones. Sweating and feeling ready for a major back-related incident, we
left them unattended for five minutes to go and pick up some paint we’d ordered
earlier. When we came back, the trolley and the flagstones were gone. We looked
around, but there was no sign. We checked the pile of flagstones on the shelf,
but no zealous, muscle-packed employee had swiftly re-stacked them. After stalking
through the store with no success, we wondered if we’d died and gone to a fate
worse than hell, trapped for eternity in a DIY netherworld on a futile circular
quest for the Twelve Lost Flagstones of Aspen Hill.
I ran to the cash tills. A little
old guy had just pushed ‘our’ flagstones through the checkout and was heading
towards the car park. I ran up beside him and asked him why he’d nicked our
trolley. Forget those wars and protestors in Syria, Egypt, Brazil and Turkey,
right at this second I was feeling the intense hurt of a most immediate abuse
of my human rights. You could say that my perspective had been narrowed by the
thought of having to haul another dozen flagstones off the shelf.
The little old man waved a
receipt at me as he did his best to beetle off with his load. “All paid for,”
he said, failing to look me in the eye.
“You just swiped our trolley and
ran off with our flagstones!” I observed accurately, if somewhat pathetically.
“All paid for,” he repeated,
waving the receipt again.
In some ways, I’ve never really
assimilated to the US lifestyle. In other ways, though, I definitely have. “You
fucking asshole,” I told him. “Just go and fuck right off.”
If someone had been quick enough
with a cell phone, there could now be a video of me on YouTube harassing an
elderly man half my size, pushing a heavy load as I swear at him. It’s not my proudest moment,
but he had to be told. I backed off and went to give the latest flagstone news to Mrs. Pop.
