bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel

I haven’t blushed since 1994, but I did on Saturday at Greenwich Market after I asked a lady at the stall how far along she was, to which she revealed that she wasn’t actually pregnant. For a gentleman retailer such as myself, whose livelihood pretty much depends on saying inappropriate things to strangers, I’m quite surprised I’ve avoided this classic pitfall for so long. The fact is, she did look pregnant, but this wasn’t as significant for me as the other, subsequent, fact, which was that her and her boyfriend were too nice to leave the stall indignantly like normal people, but just stood there for ages looking at aprons and discussing which one would suit which of their friends, and so on, while I blushed so much that I gave myself a slight headache. Even my teeth were blushing, and I had that thing where you get a roaring noise in your ears because there is so much blood charging towards your blush nodes.

I didn’t know where to look, not just because of monumental awkwardness considerations, but also because I felt that anything I stared at might burst into flames. Time had assumed such an elastic quality that when they were saying ‘oh look at that apron, ‘Sauteed For E’s And Wizz’, Brian might like that one, he’s having a barbeque next weekend’, or whatever, it was like they had recorded their speech at 45 rpm, but were playing it at 33 rpm. Any telepathists in the SE10 postcode district of London would have been treated to me screaming ‘please just go away and leave me alone and go away’ in my head during these perusals.

I had called someone a dismal northern bitch a couple of hours earlier and thought nothing of it, on the basis that she actually was a dismal nothern bitch, and being addressed as such was, I assume, nothing out of the ordinary for her, but these two were so nice, and very probably only standing there chatting to make me feel a bit better. In the end they bought a Firestarter apron for someone called Mark, and even though I was tempted to make light of the situation by saying ‘yes wise choice, and it’s black of course, which is such a slimming colour isn’t it’, I decided not to. I gave the next customer a fiver off thirty quids’ worth off stuff, explaining that it was a guilt discount, or as we agreed to call it, a guiltcount. Discussing all this with Danny after the event, we found ourselves fondly recalling an occasion in which he had offered a disinterested non-English speaking browser a £40 bracelet for £38 if he could fuck her daughter, only for it to become immediately apparant that both mother and daughter could actually speak English very well indeed, excelling particularly in sexual expletives and shouting.

Twitter.

Facebook. Crazy times in the Facebook group, with an all time high of 116 members. 120 by Christmas seems tantalising within reach.