Thank you love, thank you darling!

I'm walking south towards the shops.  The low Sun is burning coldly into my squinty eyes.  Its shiny spinning disk cuts a fresh razors edge into the black rooflines of the houses ahead.  Suddenly, above me there's a Baboon's scream from what I suspect is an invisible shite-hawk cos for sure I know that there aren't any Baboons in this neck of the woods.  With a CA-CAAAWW! CA-CAAAWW! RAAAAHHHH!!!, it proclaims to the world that it is cold enough this morning to freeze the brass knobs off a shite-hawk's pet monkey.

For sure it's an angry bird.  Going by the sound I reckon it's a very hungry gull.  I look up towards the raucous noise but can't see it, I suspect, due to its monochrome colouring against the bright early morning sky.  It is for sure well camouflaged.  I expect it is fed up because it cannot lift the lids on the neighbourhood's bins cos of a lack of thumbs.  Poor thing.  That, or a crow which has had its testicles wrapped in a 'deep heat' lined plastic bag; done last night whilst it slept by the sniggering squirrels who are now pretty bored after burying their summer harvest and are still waiting for their long sleep to come when the coldest days and nights finally arrive.

For sure it wasn't a piddo (1) as all those feckers are now curled up tight in a feathery planet shaped ball, perched on the outer limbs of their own personal Milky Ways [that's an oak tree to them and perhaps a chocolate bar to us], for sure looking like dark grey baubles dumped by the 'I can't be arsed' shite-hawk in a lifeless and unimpressive Christmas tree.  

Yes, it's a beautiful morning today.

As I walk along the path the long sharp edged shadows ahead remind me just how close we are to the Winter solstice.  Fantastic!  In 4 days time we turn the corner and start on our way back towards the summer.  Ah yes, summer 2021.  A summer to celebrate perhaps?  Of warm pungent air still fragrant with the smells of a yet to be born again spring.  Perhaps with Covid under control and the whole World resuming the normality of its non-adult ways.  Of being able to meet other folk safe and secure in the knowledge that the only germs one might catch will be those from the undoubted plethora of not so safe sausage games to come.  

I enter the shop from the rear.  Must be a female shop I mutter to myself.  I catch Chris playing with his sausage.  Naughty boy.  He's currently knitting one and purling one with his extra long crotch-itching arms.  Looks like a fiddly job but good fun to watch a master sausag'eer at work.  I've caught him just as he's about to whapp out his sausage scarf and display it in the shop's window.  He's a proud boy.  Perhaps if I ask him nicely one day he'll have a go at knitting a pork vest for me?  Or a pair of sausage socks.  They'd quickly become inedible for sure.  But to think, I would soon become the bestest mate of all the dogs and shite-hawks on the estate.

Andy is missing again.  I'm told he's away to the hairdresser for the 3rd time this week.  It's his hair again; a hirsutism problem he's still learning to live with.  Not more than 30 minutes after his last cut there was a noise at the back of the shop akin to a 'WHUMP!' as though Chris had failed to tighten the belt on his sausage trousers but was in fact a sudden explosion of hairy bits all over Andy's head and mane.  He let out a deep moaning ROAR!  Poor thing.  He has no option other than to crawl back into his hairnet whilst waiting for the next free hairdresser appointment slot at the Zoo.  Methinks he needs to cut down on the amount of game he eats.  

Martin is stood there with a 1000 yard grin on his face.  He's at the back of the shop holding a white carrier bag by the handles close to his chest which at first glance appears to have a malformed pork sausage sticking out of the bottom of it.  What that man won't do to please the ladies and make a sale.  I suspect he's also not that pleased to see me cos I'm late in to the shop today but the after effects of a good snort of laughing gas often leaves him with an irremovable grin.  He needs to be careful with his fast developing addiction else he'll risk ending up looking like a happier version of Daniella Westbrook.

It's all loves and dah'lings in the shop most days.  'What did you say love?'.  'Nothing dah'ling' we drawl before contorting with guffaws as though Martin's bottle of laughing gas has developed a leak.  It's the same with some of Martin's customers...  

Good old Geoff.  He's a retired butcher.  He's been calling me John with some confidence for the last couple of weeks or so and being that I didn't want to offend I said nowt.  So I arrive at his door this morning and he is waiting for me.  'Tell me' he says, 'what is your name?'.  I know where he is going so just say, 'whatever you want mate, I'll respond to most things'.  'No no' he says a little bit more firmly as though this time we are not playing games.  'OK, I'm Wayne.  How do you do'.  'Oh dear' he says.  'I don't know where I got John from.  John... Wayne...  John Wayne!  Yes that must be it!  LOL!' - which he did.  Yes John Wayne I now am.  Get off yer bike and milk it someone once said didn't they? 

'Listen', says I, 'it really does not matter.  Anyway Barbara, I'll see you next week!'.  'Thank you love' says Geoff.  'No problem dah'ling' I retort!  And so we end the delivery and the chat on the doorstep all smiles.  Butchers huh?

I get home early.  My mate, Mary Jane - you know the Bingley Fakir, is in York today.  Well, she called and said '..whilst your back wheel is away at Herman's Haus in Hermany why don't you borrow one of my bikes?'.  Fantastic!  A great little early Christmas present - the loan of a bike.  For sure my clothing is starting to fill out again like the over tight skin on an over packed sausage even with the use of my sweaty magnetic trainer 3 times per week.  Whilst John is here he attempts to tell me a joke; of how next year's trade between Germany and the UK will drop by over 50% after BREXIT especially for the pork sausage industry who expect it to be the wurst year ever!  Groan! 

Currently, I'm contemplating writing and sending a selection of Christmas cards to myself.  However I can't but help think and worry about the cost of doing so.  My pet moth for sure is out again perched on the lip of my empty wallet telling me to be careful with the amount of ink that I'm using.  'It's expensive you know', it whispers.

It's time for tea which today was going to consist mostly of sausages and mash.  

But not now, 'cos for some reason I've gone right off potatoes :-)

Ciao

(1) Piddo.  Noun.  A childhood and not so abbreviated alternate name for a pigeon.  Unlike the word 'uptick' it did not make it into the Oxford dictionary cos it wasn't dreamt up by a private school economics taught stock market plundering shite-hawk.