Tripping shop

I had a fierce nightmare last night. I'd been struck down by a mystery illness that rendered me only capable of speaking backwards in rhyme.

Zosia came back from Poland today. Woke me up, banging on the front door, hollering through the letterbox. "What happened to pick me up from airport, bastard!??!"

Oops.

I dragged my still mildly spaced bones out of bed and let her in, apologising profusely for my non-show at Gatwick. She was not amused, especially when I laid the blame squarely on the 'shrooms I'd consumed yesterday. They'd clearly derailed my good intentions, I explained, plus of course any chance of making it to the airport on this, or indeed any other day.

She stood hand on hip, a silent raging inferno, those gorgeously pouty lips of hers making me think of wrestling her as soon as possible.

It took a while for her to calmdown, after which she insisted I take her out to buy her a big expensive Christmas present to make up for it, something I'd neglected to do pre-Christmas itself. (Well, she went home to Krakow for ten days, what was I supposed to do? I thought she’d forget about it by the time she got back).

Before that, though, she required numbing to the cirumstances of her journey and my apparent uncaring idiocy. I fetched my bong from the front room, stuffed it full of weed and handed it over with a smile and a box of matches.

She struck a light and drew heavily on the bong, holding her breath, savouring the herb, nodding her appreciation and blew a huge blue cloud out which hovered up in the still warm air under the ceiling in the shape of a crocodile.

She took another monstrous hit and slid the bong over to me. I tentatively asked her about her trip.

“Oh..." she began vaguely, mind slipping away from reality. "I saw picture in magazine..."

"...Of?"

“Of Japanese performance artist who like to strap bread on head. Baguettes over ears, whole loaf over face. Buns in between, just forehead and hair out. He then go out, invite conflict…”

Zosia suggested we smoke another bong for good measure before heading out, and the doorbell rang. I trundled down the hall and opened up to see Weird Bob swaying about on my doorstep again, a set of heavily lidded eyes betraying yet another wasted day in the midst of a drug fug.

"Hey, Bob."

"Hey."

Zosia appeared behind me, resting her stoned head on my shoulders. "Hello Weird Bob," she said. I cringed. Weird Bob is my secret nickname for him, not meant for his ears.

I asked Bob what I could do for him.

Weird Bob said he'd found a clip on YouTube of a camel making a brilliant "Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" sound. Did we fancy coming up to watch it?

I apologised, said we'd love to but Zosia and I were about to head out on a very important shopping trip.

"I love to see it," Zosia enthused, pushing past me.

Weird Bob led her upstairs, throwing an uncertain glance back at me as he went. I showered and changed.

The weather outside was totally freezing. Crisp clear skies, bucketfuls of sunshine.

Immediately after leaving the sanctuary of my flat, Zosia and I found ourselves cast adrift in a cruel, cruel sea of marijuana-induced confusion. Absurdly high, nothing made sense at all. (Glory be!)

Zosia couldn’t face catching the bus to the shops. I admitted the idea of us hanging about at the bus stop feeling strange and paranoid, waiting for one to turn up, squeezing in, standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, packed liked sardines, sweating, breathing other people’s foul body odour and bad breath mixed with diesel fumes, worried about laughing uncontrollably in a confined public environment filled me with reservations too.

Zosia suggested we make our way on foot. It was a long way, but my brain was adrift of its moorings, rendering me incapable of mounting any serious vocal opposition to the plan.

And so on foot we did journey.

The streets were throbbing, the sun stealing dazzling reflections from the highest windows, the traffic at a complete standstill in both directions. Impatient drivers were fuming, concrete and metal everywhere, the noise of the cars and lorries all but drowned out by the roar of a passenger jet turning low overhead.

A one-legged man in an electric wheel chair overtook us.

Further on, a homeless bloke with madness hair and filthy clothes sat propped against a wall on cardboard sheets, a mangy mongrel and a can of Special Brew at his feet. I dug about in my pocket and stooped low to drop a handful of loose change in a black hat he’d left on the ground.

The homeless fella and his mutt both looked up with equally cancelled eyes. He aimed some semi-coherent nonsense my way.

“Poor man,” Zosia said. “There but for Dog of Grace.”

“It's the Grace of God and anyway, since when have you had any compassion for the downtrodden?”

“There’s much of me you know not. I have hidden deeps.”

Zosia grinned inanely back at me, like some impossibly beautiful wide-eyed simpleton. We trudged forth.

A bit further on, I stepped out to cross the road without looking and nearly got run over by a cycle courier, who stopped at the curb a little way ahead and snarled back that I was a wanker and that I should watch where I was fucking going.

I shrugged my shoulders and gestured a humble apology, which was met by a simple one-word reply: 'Cunt!'

Charming.

The cyclist remounted and rode off.

In a smart residential street I spied a handsome, smartly dressed blonde woman getting out of a Porsche Cayenne parked up ahead. She must have been fifty if she was a day, but she had a fabulous figure and looked damn tasty from behind. She was with a much younger, yet similarly sexy teenage girl. (Her daughter?)

I watched as they both slinked up the road ahead of us.

I have to say, as I get older, the mature bird holds more and more appeal. I honestly didn’t know which of them I’d rather do, the older one or the younger one. It was too close to call.

“How about both?” my inner demon suggested.

An interesting yet ludicrous notion, but as Socrates said, having a male libido sometimes feels like being chained to a madman.

The smart woman and the girl ducked into a house and I found myself having salacious thoughts about them coming back out, inviting me inside with come hither fingers while Zosia walked on oblivious; of them taking me to the house’s master bedroom, undressing and letting me look at them both naked, whilst I rubbed the back of my knees with a wet candle and mewed.

Sweet Jesus, it was all I could do not to growl out loud.

At the shops, I bought Zosia a black furry coat and got myself a Sly and the Family Stone CD. It took over two hours to achieve.

We bumped into Tom, a musican mate of mine out and about with his new Columbian girlfriend Luz. Together, in a bunch, like a group, we stopped off at an Internet café and got ourselves some hot chocolate.

Zosia and Luz sat opposite each other at one end of the table, Tom and I facing one another at the other end. Tom started banging on about something, a conversation which after a minute or two I zoned out of. Zosia had got into some serious moaning about me. She was clearly still smarting about my airport no show. I'm a totally undependable, useless boyfriend, apparently.

Yawn...

My mind tuned out of the hullabaloo and went walkabout, imagining a new TV show called “Rude Songs for Europe” in which contestants were asked to sing rude versions of pop favourites in keys too low for them.

I leant over and explained the concept to Tom who ran with the idea, converting it into a Eurovision Thong Contest, in which several girls from Eastern European Union countries should be made to parade about in a thong singing rude songs in deep manly voices.

After saying our goodbyes, Zosia and I walked back to mine. We smoked some more bongs and watched Gladiator on the box, followed by several wrestling bouts of marked athleticism.