You have gota love Southend-on-Sea. I am at the Post Office, in the Waitrose supermarket, returning the full spectrum light to Amazon that I bought last month. WHY? Don’t ask, it involves scaffolding in London, water pipes and loss of light and this flickering lamp; a diversion not worth the distance to travel it.
There is an eclectic and eccentric family ahead of me. He, lugubrious in demeanour, late 70s or possible early 80s – dishevelled and randomly dressed in what seems to be 1980s mix-and-match grab from the local charity shop. She, a 40 something Asian lady – mail order bride type person. Her makeup thick and her lips formed by injections from her arse – bright cherry red lipstick and a strange sheen to her 1960’s plastic-like clothing made me feel uncharitable to the entire group before me.
Their Satan’s spawn daughter with them, dressed in similar oddly composed outfit, looking menacing and random, on an iPad with some sort or Mario Brothers repetitive soundscape, she talking to herself in a shrill voice that came on a warm air, I imagined directly out of hades (not that I have been there).
I stood with my shopping trolley in front of me, partly stopped over it and already bored, eyeing my purchases, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone. But no eye contact was to come from any of them. I found this curiously disappointing, for I had been rehearsing my “disapproving” resting judgemental face.
My eyes drifted to the A3 foldout government paper that she held in front of her, with her index finger pointing to it as she spoke in halting English to the disinterested person behind the counter.
She asked the disinterested lady behind the counter, who was behind bulletproof glass, if they did “blah… blah”. Something about visas/citizenship I intuited. She said “No, we don’t do that”. So, they press on and say, “where can we do that?”
She spends 5 minutes telling them that she doesn’t know – maybe try this, maybe try that.
Then, he farts – perhaps in disappointed response or perhaps just with the abandon of a familiar act, that goes unnoticed at home.
Dear Reader, I apologise for using the word “fart”, but “passing wind” would just not do justice to the volume and pernicious nature of this expulsion.
It was not a silent short fart, but rather a serious, spluttery series of wet farts that goes on like it is coming directly from Satan’s arse – Satan who has just started a detox diet perhaps. It continues with abandon and lack of self-consciousness.
Then the smell hits me. I am overwhelmed. Can’t breathe. I step back. Can’t breathe. Won’t breathe. The scene has quietly become a crime scene. The farts drifts from quiet disregard of the public space around them, to an assault on my well-being. I implode.
The couple continued to stare at the paper, as if the paper itself would now continue the conversation at the point where the Post Office assistant stopped. It is silent. They are silently staring at it. Interminable silence eventually breaks into unintelligible mutters.
I remain invisible.
How seconds seemingly become hours in my mind, and I resist the urge, now urgent, to speak up. I remain introspective, holding my tongue silently, breathlessly engulfed.
By some miracle, they say, “thank you” and step back, but only a foot, and continue to talk to each other, blocking my way. The child has her iPad on the counter now, in a new twist, dominating all space and is still playing the game and muttering.
The woman behind the counter decides it is time for her to just look off into space and ignore me.
I say to the child “excuse me, can I get to the counter please?” The parents look at me as if I have assaulted them. Finally, they notice me in the queue. I remain in a haze of satanic fart gas.
I look at everyone there, including the woman behind the counter, who at this point acknowledges me and says, “they are just finishing up”.
I say: “I think they are already finished and not moving away”. I managed to say that without breathing in.
Then as a final insult, she decides to have a passive aggressive swipe at me for hurrying them along. I just say “they have finished”… I stand in the ever-present, heavier-than-air cloud of Satanic gas.
Is that the sound of another series of farts as he moves off? Quite possibly.
I consider whether or not to tell the disinterested Postal Worker about the impossibly vile, evil and colourless gas that I have been forced to endure. She looks totally unsympathetic. I don’t think that we will ever bond over this and become friends and have coffee once a month or send each other Christmas cards in the future. It is more likely that she will call security to me, so I decide not to say anymore.
“What are we doing today?” she says. “Amazon return” I say.
It suddenly seems so ordinary and pedestrian. I am breathing again, but only briefly, as the low hanging cloud has refused to dissipate.
I transact my business and depart holding my breath, leaving her behind her bullet proof glass, together with her disinterest and, I assume, her untainted air in her glass box.
But as I walk away, I think: “I bet she farts in there too!”
A smile crosses my face as I think of her silent colleague who has been there all along, sitting next to her, stoney faced in her own world, waiting for someone to come and do a money change.
“You deserve each other” I think.
A spring returns to my step and I breathe again as I pass through the double doors and back into the outside world!
I have survived another AMAZON return.
