As I haven't been working for the last week, I have been doing a lot of sitting at home on my own, not really talking to anyone. This not talking has had a funny effect on me.
I lived in Australia for a while, and found when I came back that I had become a non-Britisher in certain ways. For example, on one occasion I was standing in Boots looking at shampoos. I have always been a little daunted by the shampoo aisle - for a start - there's a whole aisle dedictated to it - a whole aisle of four sets of shelves, each about ten foot long. Then turn around and find another set of four parallel ten foot long shelves.
Each ten foot shelf (of which there are 8, let's remember) houses a whole host of exotic smelling, luridly coloured shampoos. Each of which is offering you a different promise - to make your hair silky soft, to give you bouncy curls, to give you light reflecting shine, to stop you having an itchy scalp, to sort out your greasy roots and dry ends... Frankly, I'm intimidated. I just want clean hair. Once in a while.
Anyway, I digress. So the point of the story was, I'm standing there in the shampoo aisle, having recently come back from Australia and there's a woman next to me, whom I can see is sharing my plight. So in the spirit of shampoo-intimidation-solidarity, I strike up a conversation. Something innane - about how many there are, difficult to choose, etc. And the woman furtively darts her eyes askance in my direction, quickly moves them back towards the ground, and scurries off. Not a single word spoken from her lips. Hmph, so much for shampoo-intimidation-solidarity.
Anyway - the point I am making, is that being on my own for several days, not talking to anyone has roused this trait in me, reminiscent of my time in Australia. I am, sin of all sins, talking to strangers. And not just talking. Burbling. Endless chatting about nowt - I've been scaring people in honesty, with my giddiness at having someone to talk to.
I went to talk to a lady on the market about taking my suit in for me and gave her the whole history of suit purchase and reason for it being too big, my words interspersed with giggles at my sheer delight at being able to talk to someone about something. ANYTHING.
I don't think she's going to be taking my suit in. Yeah, she laughed along, but she was scared. You could see it in her eyes and hear it in her quietly mumbled prayers that no other potential customers would arrive while she was tried to field the mad lady away from her stall.
Anyway - got to go - I think the post man's arriving in a minute...
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