Supermarket Chronicles Volume 1,
Chapter 2: Unearthing The Roots
“Sybil!!” Came the o-so familiar squeek from an old lady with a walking stick.
“Audrey!” Came the even more familiar wine of another one just inches from where I was standing. It’s almost frightening how such short, slow-moving old people are so amazingly loud when it comes to meeting someone they know. They somehow tap into a mysterous energry source that manages to feed loud conversation for an extremely long time and consiquently aggrovate every other person in a mile-wide facinity.
Its not the most uplifiting scene to be watching at the best of times, heck its nearly enough to make you want to hurl a chair towards the ever-chattering heads, but when working on a produce department the only thing you have to hurl is spuds, carrots and brussel sprouts. None of which cause sufficient damage to prevent further chattering. But it was even worse that these annoyances would decide to communicate at super-lightening speed at the exact point that my arch-enemy-non-manager had rounded up a bunch of adolecent chavs to restore the store’s hierarchy of leadership and put his royal highness, Cyda right there at the top. He stepped aside and somehow slipped into the background as if nothing was happening. I wish I could do that when the chattering Sybils arrive. More to the point I wish I could do that when at least 5 or 6 chavs are heading my way.
After weighing up my options, one of which being throwing Sybil at them and hoping for the best, I made the best of a bad situation. What’s the worst that could happen, at the very least I am surrounded by other customers who would at least verify the story should the distroy my uniform and bleed my insides out with a rusty syringe and a half-blunt pocket knife that’s twice the size of any pocket. It didn’t matter. I did my job and at the very least got to hurt Cyda’s fist once or twice every time he missed me and hit the wall.
Regardless, I walked towards the chavs as bold as they were walking to me (still in grabbing distance of Sybil – just in case I needed to throw her at them at the last possible moment) and used something I never hoped I would need. During my ever-boring french lessons in secondary school I figured I would use the hour-long toturefests to learn something that would actually be useful one day. I learned the lost ‘art’ of chav. Due to my french teacher’s incapable ability to teach anything other than a million and one reasons to bomb France and my ever evident attitude of just that I was placed at the back of the classroom on an every-lesson bassis. This meant quality time with my less-than-favourate chav friends. However this gave me all the time in the world to learn the wonderful language that chavs speak. It’s mainly a selected frequency of grunts and snorts, much like the commen farmyard pig. Unfortunatly, due my being sworn to secrecy I cannot bistow the exact dialect I used to communicate with the chavs back on the produce department. But in everyday english I said the words ‘Quick, he’s getting to the bakery section…’ Now all I needed was something or someone to make them that I really was headed to the bakery section…
Not long after these grunts directed at the chavs, I used my quick-thinking tongue to interrupt the old biddies. It is a little known fact that old ladies move as slow as snails with a single exception. Bingo. They have an unquenchable thirst for bingo, so it wasn’t hard for me to explain to them in plain english that there was a special bakery bingo in the bakery department and that the first prize was tickets to the next bingo game. You should have seen how fast they moved. I blinked and they were several metres from clearing my eyesight. There was many acts of science at work at that moment, like the simple fact chavs can’t understand plain english otherwise they may have understood what I was saying, but the most exciting scientic force at work is the customer rush. It takes two people to start it, but when they do, the whole world follows.
It was seconds before there was a stampede of old women, chavs and other customers all running towards the bakery department. I knew I didn’t have much time before the crowds realised there was no bargains, that the old people realised there is no bingo and that the chavs realised that my grunts weren’t from a real chav. But I knew what I had to do. I looked around and finally worked out where Cyda was hiding. Behing some coke crates at the side entrance to the store. Unfortunatly my realisation of this was a little less than subtle, most probably because I had recently developed a new habit of speaking exactly what I saw out loud and since Cyda wasn’t a thick as a tree, he was able to figure out what my next step was. Get him.
“Cyda, stop.. we need to talk…” I yelled after him as he ran up the store isle. Luckily all of the customers had relocated to the bakery department so I was able to follow him with ease. He was headed out towards the back of the store. As he ran up an isle, I threw a case of loose sprouts down it after him, while I took the next one. By the time I reached the top of the isle he had resorted to sliding, simply coz he could do little less since there was about a thousand sprouts tripping him over. He grabbed a nearby set of wheels and used it as a skateboard to reach the back yard. As there was only on set of wheels at hand, I used the next best thing at my disposal. The pump truck. Luckily it was a motarised one and I was gaining ground on the little traiter fast. We were out in the back of the store and heading towards the warehouse. I wasn’t sure why he was headed there until we reached the huge area of open space. He looked straight up. He was headed for the roof. He beat me to the ladder by only seconds, unfortunatly for me he was a faster climber. It also didn’t help that he was farting ALL the WAY UP. Gases aside, I needed to catch this guy.
Once on the roof he ran towards the highest point, almost as if it was planned. I suddenly realised there was a hatch, it was an all or nothing oppertunity. I took a dive from one roof bump-bit to another to catch up with him and prevent him from reaching the hatch. The gap was a little less than I’d anticipated and caused me to collide with the farting chav-boss, sending us both rolling down the sloped roof. He reached the guttering first and managed to latch on with his hands. He hung like a monkey off of the roof, just above the word Sainsbury’s. The incoming customers couldn’t believe thier luck, the prospect of shopping with a free live action film. I was falling just behind him, but before I reached the bottom I trust myself onto a nearby ledge. I caught my footing again and could just reach Cyda’s hand.
I grabbed one of his hands and began to pull him up. Not because I’m a nice guy but simply coz I needed to know what the heck was going on. He pulled his hands away from mine and slipped a little more. He seemed to want to fall to his death. I grabbed his jacket. He looked to the car park below and let go. The jacket tore and I was left holding the only thing left of Cyda. I thought. I then had another thought, Cyda wasn’t that stupid. As I peered further off the ledge I saw a truck pull away from the entrance with Cyda on the roof, and he looked alive. I rolled onto my back and sighed. I got nothing from this experience other than proof that grunts work with a chavs and a new suit jacket. It then came to me. I checked the suit jacket pocket and found something that would shock me to my very core. Something that would change my day. My week. My life.
To be continued…
(it all makes sense in the next chapter…)