Inside Leg

The English may like to queue but you’d never have thought it that morning. Shopping for shit. I kept glancing around at them, women mainly, orange faces, squirty tan melting at the neck into skin the pallor of a sour jug of cream, they rarely maintained eye contact for more than a second, as if any more and I would undo, even unravel their hardened state, the state they assume everyone else must feel because they too, are in a queue? Where has the joy gone in getting something you want? My attention for a moment wandered and I found myself staring at a rack of socks near the checkouts, socks with names embroided on them, I found myself wondering if I bought the ones with Mike on whether I would feel any different about myself. It was a strange thought really, could I really be Mike for a day, and stranger still what about the pants next to them, Stuart emblazoned across in flames, an identity crisis could ensue, jesus what would the doctors and nurses make of it if I was involved in some fatal accident, out on the slab, mike or stuart, mike or stuart ? but according to the id in his wallet his name is…..I was glad to have my attention distracted by an elderly gentleman wearing a three quarter length cream coloured sheepskin, a tatty P.D James novel hanging from his coat pocket, he was at the till, a pair yellow trousers folded on the counter, faffing about with a tape measure, the sort a tailor might wear around his neck. The checkout girl, young blonde with an oblong shaped face done up like a ‘win this free that’ cereal box, leaned slightly out of her chair, trying to give the old man instructions how to measure his inside leg. But every time he stuck the tape under his crotch and took it down to his ankle, his leg at the knee cocked out a good few inches. The girl kept looking down the line to see if any supervisor was free, I don’t think it was that she wanted to leave her station, more like she didn’t want to be in such close proximity to the old mans genitalia. I looked around to see if anyone else was observing this but no one was, they looked just as bored and ill as the last time I’d looked. I turned back to the man and saw that the young girl was now speaking to another woman, older and with less dignity to lose, someone more used to bending down in front of aged men. The two assistants were having a quiet giggle between themselves, the man, crow like, kept looking back down the aisles. The older woman eventually came around from the tills and after a bit of banter, her hand gently pushing the small of his back, he straightened up and remained so as she took the measure of his inside leg, which she relayed to the checkout girl with a wink. The trousers, neatly folded on the counter mustn’t have been right because the old man picked them up and ambled off back down the aisle. A few minutes later, having paid for my stuff and on my way out, I heard one of the other checkouts a little further down the line say to her colleague that she did feel sorry for that old man, ‘it’s the third time today he’s been back in the queue’ I glanced back and saw the old man, spectacles slightly askew, a lost benevolent look inhabiting his face, across his arms a fresh set of yellow trousers, possibly the wrong size yet again? another womans caress down the inside of his leg. The dirty bugger.