on holiday, but that one pointed up even more sharply than usual just how much our little family unit is changing, and how far our interests have diverged over the last few years. None of us liked to admit it, but I think we all felt a sense of relief once back home and away from the obligatory closeness of a family holiday.
The cooking smell gave enough hint of good food to be seductive, anyway – no doubt fully intended – and I picked up a loaf in its Cellophane packet, still warm. I resisted the temptation to break off the crusty tip on the spot and eat it, and continued on quickly round the shop, picking up mince, potatoes and milk as I went. Congratulating myself on the speed of the venture, I looked over to the checkouts and was depressed to see how busy they were. This is another thing I’m proud of: my ability to pick the quickest queue at the beastly checkout. I sized them up smartly and found one that was distinctly shorter than the others and – and this is a crucial point in the fine judgement of queues, of course – the trolleys in it didn’t appear to be particularly full. I made a beeline for it, brushing past an elderly lady who tutted at me as I did so.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘just trying to –’
‘I can see what you’re doing,’ she interrupted, ‘it’s the way you’re doing it that is unnecessary.’
Very precise, I thought. You sound like one of my juniors.
‘Sorry,’ I said again, attempting a regretful smile. ‘Do you want to go ahead of me?’
‘No, no, you go ahead if you’re in such a rush.’
Wonderfully full of put-upon self-sacrifice, that reply was. Almost up to the standard of my mother on one of her better days, or Judy on one of her worse. I gave her what I hoped was another of my most charming smiles and joined the queue ahead of her, giving in to temptation and pulling the tip off the still-warm baguette to nibble as I prepared to wait my turn.
There were three people ahead of me. The young man in the process of stacking his goods onto the moving belt had lank hair falling forward out of a hooded anorak and sniffed as he unloaded his basket. I could see a tin of beans, two packets of sliced bread, four yoghurts strapped together under a brightly coloured foil topping and two large bottles of Coke. As they neared the till they were picked up by the extremely chunky-looking arm of the checkout girl, and then swept briskly in front of the beeping eye of the scanner.
I leant forward to get a better view. That arm was more than chunky. It really did look extraordinarily big. And the fingers on its end were – sausages. The cliché description had leapt into my head and was the perfect word for them, suiting their shiny pink roundness to a T and seeming particularly apt in the surroundings. I felt as if I could stretch across, lean forward and gather them up in a full, squashy handful and pop them in my basket for Judy to use in one of her toad-in-the-holes.
I shuffled forward as the young man finished packing his goods into a carrier bag and reached into his pocket to pay, but the elderly woman two in front of me moved in the way just as I tried to take a look at the owner of the sausage fingers, and I could see no more than the arm and hand I’d already studied. I looked down again at the latest load of shopping to make its way along the belt. Dog food; packets of sauce mix; frozen peas. I pictured the grey-haired woman at a dining table sitting next to a large dog, the two of them tucking into huge piles of peas and Pal respectively. Meanwhile, the sausage fingers waved to and fro as the goods were picked up one by one and passed across the magic eye, the huge hand moving heavily and slowly, pausing every now and then when the beep took an extra repetition or two to encourage it to respond. Chips, loo paper, tomatoes. All glided silently along the belt until grasped by the chipolatas. No – not chipolatas: the big ones. Bangers. As the arm moved, relentlessly and rhythmically, and the shopper shifted to the side of the till to reach over for a carrier, I lifted my eyes and for a moment felt confused between what I saw and the images of the food still passing across the bottom of my field of vision. Why was the vast packet of pink marshmallows wearing glasses? And why was it moving: squidging and undulating in sticky, sweaty ripples? When the eyes behind the glasses looked up into mine it shocked me, breaking the moment and forcing me to recognise what I’d been staring at unthinkingly. I dropped my gaze quickly from the face but I was even more unnerved at the sight of the shiny pink folds of flesh continuing downwards in vast Michelin-like coils towards the open neck of a green-checked overall.
And that was just the beginning. I went on working my way down the overall in disbelieving fascination. From where the material began at the collar everything was tension: trussed, straining dollops of flesh, battling to burst free of the huge swathes of green-checked cotton encasing them, pulling at the poppers and oozing from the spaces in between in pale-pink polyester-covered bubbles. The entire human parcel was jammed into the space behind the counter, spilling over the edges in pleats of green-checked fat, as if the unfortunate girl had been crammed in there as forcefully as an ugly sister’s foot into the glass slipper.
As I shifted forward towards the end of the belt, with just one young woman remaining in front of me, I glanced back up at the girl’s face. She was still looking at me while she continued her relentless scanning, and I realised – with a sudden jolt of guilt – that she was aware of me studying her, had probably been aware of it the whole time. I looked away quickly and began to unpack my shopping onto the belt, stopping to reach over and grab the plastic divider with NEXT SHOPPER on it and placing it hastily between my sliding packs of depressed-looking mince and the large box of Persil belonging to the woman in front of me. I arranged and rearranged my five rather pathetic items as they were carried towards the giant fingers, placing the baguette diagonally across the other things, carefully avoiding glancing up, and assuming what I hoped was a look of casual introspection. I removed the plastic divider as the Persil woman got out her purse, and placed it neatly behind my little assortment of goodies, separating them from the rest of the as yet empty belt. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the pink bangers reaching towards my baguette.
‘Bog off!’
I was quite startled by the volume and confidence of her voice. There was such a ring of command in the tone of the incomprehensible words that I started guiltily, assuming I was being given some sort of large person’s reprimand, that she had seen me watching her and was giving me a justified insult in return.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Did you know it was a bogoff?’ she went on, looking straight at me through the slightly smeared lenses of her glasses
I didn’t know how to answer this. While being more than a little relieved to discover that she had not, after all, been retaliating with a mysterious term of abuse for my uncharitable thoughts on her size, I was still at a loss as to the main drift of her communication. I hadn’t, in other words, the faintest idea what she was talking about, and, before I could decide if I knew it was a bogoff, it was clear I would have to establish not only to which object the ‘it’ in question referred, but also what exactly was the meaning of the term ‘bogoff.
‘What was a – I’m sorry,’ I ventured, ‘I still don’t quite –’
‘It’s a Buy One Get One Free – did you know? The baguette. We have to ask.’
The resignation in her voice told me that I was probably not alone in my ignorance, and that she had had to translate the simple acronym many times before. I was glad to find myself alone at the checkout, unembarrassed by any smirking housewives behind me (the elderly woman I had supposedly pushed in front of having given up the wait and moved to another till).
‘Oh, I see!’ I smiled at her. ‘Sorry, I’m with you. Buy One Get One – yes, yes I see. Bogof! I had no idea. I mean I had no idea that bogof meant two for the price of thingummy and I had no idea that baguettes were – um – bogofs.’
‘Well?’
