My Ridiculous Life

I sometimes feel like I live in a cartoon or a very heightened reality.
I entertain myself with the tiniest of moments in my days that I spend increasingly on my own.
My growing dilemma is with the shop keepers in my neighbourhood, inparticular the ones on the high rd that I live on.

We have a strip of shops, all selling fruit and veg in bowls for £1 each, or '5 bowls for £4' they ALL say with the pleasure of the first time it was said as if they were the only shop saying it. I used to shop at the first one that I would arrive at from my house, bar the one directly over the road the isles are too narrow and I don't like the owner. So the one after that is the large one with about 7 - 10 members of staff that work all day beyond my waking hours selling an array of products from around the world. The male workers stand outside next to the bowls, '5 for £4' and start filling up a basket for me if is so much as look at in the direction of a bowl. So yes I would politely buy the veg that they kindly selected for me and leave feeling smug that i had supported the community and no longer needed to shop at sainsburys for anything other than the 'essentials'. This soon wore off when 2 meters later would be greeted by another shop owner equally as charming saying '5 for £4' with puppy dog, my life depends on this sale eyes, in which case I would pretend that yes I needed a..... lemon, not 10 just one I'd say, but 10 was cheaper so I would take them and turn to leave. As I turned to leave on my first visit to this shop, the previously smiley owner notices the other bags in my hands, and takes it upon himself to riffle through these bags asking where I got these from as if the bag were full of illegal goods. I said you know where I got them from, he said well you need to shop here from now on my veg is fresh every day.

Now I can't so much as pass his shop without buying something, I go in and ask for something that I actually want, which he doesn't have and leave with something I don't want because I feel guilty.

TBC