May 13, 2002
Lunch
There was a long queue for sandwiches in the deli this lunchtime. Good Cop seems to be off sick (food poisoning, perhaps?) so Bad Cop bossed everyone about – even the customers – barking orders in impenetrable Armenian at the minions, and choppy English at those of us on the other side of the counter. The queue snaked the length of the shop, and then doubled back on itself, as it usually does. We waited, some patiently, some not so.
A short, unkempt, vague looking woman of a certain age wandered in, wearing a sports jacket and carrying her hand outstretched, holding something in her palm. She approached the businessman at the counter, who was paying for his lunch, and said slowly to him “Could you go to the shop next door and buy me some poppers?”
He looked at her, bemused, and she repeated “There’s a shop next door, could you go there and buy me some poppers?”
Bad Cop piped up from behind the cash register, “He’s buying his lunch, leave him alone!”
The businessman said to his companion “What does she want? Poppers? Party poppers?”
Someone in the queue chimed in, saying, “You should try the Non-Stop Party Shop on High Street Kensington. They’ll have them”
“No,” said the woman with the glassy eyed stare, “I can’t go that far, that’s too far. Will you please go next door and buy me some poppers? Please. Please.”
Bad Cop yelled at her again, “Get out, please. These people all work in offices. They’re too busy to do your shopping for you.”
The woman tried again, someone else in the line, “Will you go and get me some poppers? They won’t sell them to me. Here’s my money. Please. Please.”
The woman she had accosted ignored and sidestepped her neatly, collecting her ciabatta and leaving the shop. A man in the queue said loudly, though to no-one in particular, “There’s a newsagent on the corner; I think they might have silly string.”
The woman staggered slowly out onto the pavement, asking passers-by if they could buy her poppers.
I bit my tongue and tried to resist the temptation to explain to the entire queueing deli that the woman was probably not looking for celebration accessories, but was instead looking for someone to furnish her with Amyl Nitrate from the sex shop down the block.
Partying. Not partying.
