Tuesday 27 November 2007

The Folding Stuff

Today was a day off work. And what better way to spend it than in the company of the F.G. down at the nearest main shopping street to my comfy little abode.

She suffers so in the dimming of winter, (she is effectively solar powered) and so we gathered what light this drear November day could offer, and strolled abroad, about the merry folk as they yabbered in West country accents, weaving their tales of joy with old fashioned working class bonhomie to all and sundry.

I've become partially obsessed with the task of finding a cheap egg-poacher of late, and this visit to a pound shop paradise turned out to be precisely how to do it. A fiver, what a bargain! Now all my eggs will be perfect, though it has been pointed out that my cholesterol level may bump up a bit as a result. I remarked lately that I refused to go for one at a tenner, but a bluey would be the fair exchange that proves no robbery. And so, I felt duty bound to hand over the aforementioned Princely sum and scuttle off with the goods.

A mere minute or so later, barely time to explain how ecstatic I was to F.G., I found myself glancing downwards at the pavement as I walked. Hush my cotton socks and go to the foot of my stairs, if there wasn't a tenner on the deck. I stuck my foot on it, in that cool way that finding cash brings out in a miserly old scrote like myself, and swept it into my pocket. This is, after all, the payback for being so short.
Now scarcely able to put my elation into words, but able nonetheless, I strolled on hand in hand with my girl, who was expressing her wonder about how it was I always found money in the street.

Then the first pangs of guilt began. What if somebody really needed that cash? It was found with a receipt from the greatest retail outlet of them all, (Not Harrods you fools, Wilkinsons) Perhaps I should find out whose cash it was as the purchase was only a few minutes previous. I was talked out of it by the kind of common sense as used by girlfriends who are being driven mad by verbose sidekicks apparently pushed to the edge of apoplectic hysteria by a gross profit of £5 and the prospect of neater breakfasts.

I like walking about with this woman. She brings the paradox of calm insanity to my day. I feel though that we should always walk in step with each other, opposite feet treading at the same time ie. not like marching soldiers. Normally, I have to adjust my gait in order to achieve this by doing a sort of one pace skip. With this in mind on the way home, walking up the 99 steps to where my house sits atop an urban hill, amid the other jostling architecture, I contemplated all my good fortune of the afternoon so far, and could ask myself only this question.
Why is it that some people fold their arms right over left, and others left over right? Can any of you out there help in my quest for the answer to this query as there is no logic behind the answer, I fear, and it's beginning to fry my grey matter?