What are you in the queue for?

Big queue today.

Pre-Christmas rush, I wouldn't wonder.  Last posting dates and such.

Slade playing on the radio. Then Greg Lake. Then Michael Bublé.

By the time I get to the counter Dawn is all buzzy.  Not like her.  She’s usually on the stern side but today there is a girlish fizz about her.  She spreads her fingers wide and stops for a moment, spotting me.  She fixes me with her eye,  hanging back from her side of the counter.  She looks like a gladiator preparing to fight, and I have a feeling she will win.

            -  Just breathe, she says.  Just breathe…

            -  Been busy, I ask.

            -  Mad, she says.

She steps up to the counter again.  Battle Stations.

Behind the glass a foil decoration glitters as it lifts in the warm updraft from from the fan heater.  There’s tinsel along the top of the window, stuck up with sticky tape.

Dawn grips the bundle of notes I pass through to her and starts a business-like counting of the corners, scrunching the notes under her fingers as she digs through the pile.  She's nearly done when her Santa hat slips down over her eyes.  She tugs it off her head with a growl and starts the count again.

            -  No pooch, today? I ask

            -  Huh?

            -  Your little dog.  Is it not here?

            -  We’re too busy, says Dawn.  He’d get squashed!  Under ‘s feet.  Terry’s got him at home.

            -  What do you call him?

            -  Terry? she laughs.  I call him Terry!

            -  The dog, I say, what’s his name?

            -  Oh, we call him Skittles.

            -  Skittles?

            -  Yes, Skittles.  Y’know, like the sweets.

She waves her hand vaguely at the shelves down the side of the shop.

            -  Ha!  How did you come up with that?

            -  It’s because everything he touches becomes Skittles!

It feels like she’s been longing to say that to someone.

            -  Y’know, like the advert.  Where the bloke touches the desk and it turns to Skittles.  Then he touches the phone and… skittles.  Well he chews things, does our Skittles - toothbrushes, slippers and the like, and then they kind of become his because no other bugger wants them anymore…

            -  Oh,… right.

            -  So everything becomes Skittles!

Then Doreen calls over - somebody needs a SORN form so Dawn has to pack me off to Ron and deal with it.

First in the Queue

In the Queue Too
Third in the Queue