Three Fingers, A Brazilian And Aunt Bessie

[Oskar]

A trip to the local supermarket is no longer as simple as it once was. It involves a whole series of encounters with people determined to sell you things you don't want.

On my last trip to Tescos, I'd barely had time to get out of my car, when an African bloke called Mambwe, wearing a luminous bib with the words 'Liberian Wash and Go' written on it, negotiated a £10 fee for a shampoo and wax. My car looked great... clean and shiny... but I had a bit of trouble walking upright afterwards. Those epilators do sting.

Before I'd even finished crossing the car park, I'd joined the AA, donated my jacket to a Rumanian orphanage and had an exciting new brand of chilli sauce, called Vesuvius, ladled down my throat by a girl in a white jumpsuit.

But it didn't end there. Having just made it through the sliding doors, I was approached by one of the 'meeters and greeters' employed by the store. This one, obviously bored with the usual opening gambit of, 'Hello sir, do you have a Clubcard?' asked me if I could take criticism. This was a rhetorical question as she proceeded to tell me that my flies were undone and that there were tufts of pubic hair clinging to my trousers. In the absence of a bin, I collected up two handfuls of body hair, put them in my pockets and casually wandered over to the newspaper stand.

Now I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with opening a newspaper only to have half a tonne of assorted rubbish drop to the floor. It's got to the point now where I suspect the staff at this particular shop are deliberately dumping their unwanted rubbish inside the newspapers, rather than take it to the charity shop. In this week's copy of the Luton and Dunstable Gazette, for instance, I found a Dusty Springfield LP, a turquoise cravat and a pair of ladies high heeled shoes - size 11...

With the pace of life becoming faster and faster, people want convenient, healthy and affordable foods that fit into their busy daily routines. Marketing food through personalising a product and using images of a bygone time when food was natural, home-cooked and wholesome is big business. Aunt Bessie, Mr Kipling and Captain Birdseye are all part of a pantheon of fictional characters that live on top of an idealized Walton's Mountain of the food world.

Oh look! There's Mr Kipling slipping another batch of his delicious cherry bakewells into the oven, in-between playing bowls on his front lawn with his old mate Colonel Sanders. And over there we see Aunt Bessie in her white apron, shoving on the oven gloves to remove her delightfully crispy Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes.

If these characters existed in the real world, Aunt Bessie would probably be shacked up with The Man From Del Monte, having finally succumbed to his Latin charm and caravan in Buenos Aires; leaving Mr Kipling living alone on disability benefit on a run-down housing estate in Kentish Town, terrorized every night by a gang of youths led by the Milky Bar Kid.

For me, Captain Birdseye lost all credibility when he was transformed into a Martin Kemp look-alike a few years ago, only to be returned to his more familiar Father Christmas in blue serge uniform, some time later. The 'With No Additives' advertising campaign really was the last straw.
'A is for allyl butyrate. B is for benzyl caprylate...'
And C is for 'Come in Captain Birdseye, your time is up'. Why should we believe anything you've got to say anymore? You're a fictional character. A mere flag of convenience, purporting to be the government's Chief Medical Officer. Bugger off you old fraud!

Shop assistants are now trained to smile, say hello and take you to the item you are looking for. I can vouch for this, as this is what happened to me when I asked a shop assistant called Russell where the tinned pilchards were. He packed a couple of navy rucksacks and took me to a fish canning factory just outside Reykjavik. Conditions were harsh, with temperatures dropping as low as -30 degrees Celsius. At one point, Russell climbed out of his bivy bag and said, 'I might be some time'. I never saw him again.

Sir Ranulph Feinnes has proved himself to be more than an adequate replacement for Russell in the tinned meat and fish aisle, although one of his frost bitten fingers, together with fragments of mitten, turned up in a jar of pickled onions, which upset one or two customers and led to an official warning. Jars of gherkins and piccalilly have since been removed from the shelves for further examination, as Sir Ranulph was unable to account for the whereabouts of two other missing fingers - and a toe.

During of one his earlier polar expeditions, he also managed to lose several of his middle names and is now registered at the Kennel Club merely as Sir Ranulph Twistleton Wykeham Here Boy Fetch! Yes We Have No Bananas Feinnes. The good news, Sir Ranulph, is that some of those names you thought had been lost forever have been dug out of the snow and are on their way back to you, travelling first class on a Thomas Cook steamer. You'll soon be reunited with three old faithfuls - 'Johnny Foreigner', 'Balaclava Helmet' and 'I Shoot Ramblers'. The search goes on, however, for the missing 'Wilson, Keppel and Betty'.

Supermarkets are supposed to be great places to pick up women. It is rumoured that Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis met over a promotional display of Brussels sprouts. He was going in for another handful, when her gloved hand reached across to grab the big ones at the back of the crate. They had dinner that night and ate the sprouts that had, through kismet, brought them together and, rather sooner than anticipated, discovered the full range of each others' bodily functions.

But there was no such moment for me. I had finished my shopping and headed for the checkouts - alone. Oskar Homolka sat at checkout 8. Brilliant actor. He was a very tall Ghanaian man who used to play short, fat, Eastern European spymasters.He starred in films like 'Moscow By The Dozen', 'Yalta! Yalta! Yalta!' and 'Take Your Boots Off And Come In'. His appearance in 'Make Mine A Large One', an obscure Lithuanian soft porn film, loosely based on the Pinocchio story, was to say the least ill-judged, and resulted in a downward spiral into golf and model Airfix kits, from which he never fully recovered.

I had, by this time, begun to experience the effects of the 'Vesuvius' chilli sauce that had been administered into my nervous system on the way in. This manifested itself in heavy sweating all over my body and kaleidoscopic hallucinations in which Stan Laurel and Elton John were pushing a piano up into the arse end of an elephant ridden by the television presenter Clare Balding, who was merging in and out with random circular images of the England 1966 World Cup Squad.

Through bloodshot, streaming eyes, I beheld an image of mid-life loveliness sitting at the till. She was a cross between Michelle Pfeiffer and Jimmy Savile. Perhaps all was not lost. Steam was belching up from my pants that were now a living rainforest. Vesuvius was beginning to erupt. I made some comment about her having very attractive teeth and would she possibly consider...

'£42.75 please and do you want cashback with that?' came her rather girlish reply.

I reached into my pockets and pulled out two twenties, and enough pubic hair to stuff a mattress... I didn't hang about for the change.

[wildmountainthyme]

i sat reading this with an ever widening smile. very good oskar. enjoyed. funny. why no more replies? i don't understand? this board seems to be filled with some very good stuff but why no replies? there are too many tosser plastic poets out there( myself included). do you still have the ladies shoes? would they go with a knee lenght black pvc skirt?
cheers oskar
dan

[Susan-Morris3]

Very weird piece of writing you have created. Not my sort of thing I'm afraid, got a bit boring and immature for my liking.Not very funny.
Had you been smoking something ?

[Lovely]

Susan you have this which i don't know. Love you here.


A fantastic essay with feel but I know you more but still
you seem to shine--- this is my poet's mind


xx--- love you always

[Oskar]

Cheers, Lovely.

[Pauline]

Hillarious. My tesco run has never been as eventful as yours. I have laughed all the way through your shopping trip. Fantastic observation,
Such a dry wit. I love it. Thank you so much for making me smile.
I will now view shopping in a different light. A chore I normally hate, I look forward to my next expedition.