Not quite 10:15 Saturday Night

If I said “7 o’clock, Saturday night” to you in a slightly longer-winded version of the perennial deep-and-meaningless-but-great-fun word association game, what would leap to your mind?

Let me take a wild guess that “browsing the generous selection of reduced price oven-ready meals in the chiller aisle of the Co-op in Sheerness High Street” would not be the phrase that fell first from your lips. Or probably even fifty third. Or one hundred and twelfth for that matter.

I’d arrived back home around 6 feeling peckish and a little tired having spent the day at the third instalment of my yoga foundation course. The course is run at a school hall in Sandwich, about 50 miles from here. It’s an ancient and pretty little seaside town in itself, although I feel its postcard appeal is somewhat diminished by the presence of three giant grey concrete cooling towers and the mega chemical works that festers and bubbles just a heartbeat away from the high street. It's also a place I can never quite get my bearings of. I always manage to find my way into Sandwich without a hitch; it’s the getting back out again that’s the rub. I have a suspicion that the seemingly benign inhabitants move the roads around whilst we’re OM-ing and stretching away in the school hall; in any event, even on this - my fourth - visit I still managed to find yet another unfamiliar route home without even trying.

And so it was that I was standing there in the Co-op, tummy rumbling and a little weary after a day of yoga and driving, weighing up the pros and cons of discounted cottage pie against spinach and ricotta cannelloni, when I was accosted by a tall fair haired gentleman about my age.
“Hello Katy!” he grinningly bellowed from four feet away, before proceeding to examine the contents of my basket with great scrutiny. His hand alighted upon a small packet of baby new potatoes, which he frowningly picked up out of my basket and held up at shoulder height.
“You see these potatoes? You could have bought a packet like this for the same price.” he said, grabbing a larger pack of spuds from his own basket and holding the two bags up together so that I could truly appreciate the difference in size. “Bigger bag, you see, but the same price; better value.”
“Oh. I, err…”
“Great to see you Katy!” he smiled, walking off for two paces before spinning round and kissing the palms of both his hands, blowing the kisses at me, shouting “Love you! Love you!” and disappearing around the two-for-one price promotion on cat food at the top of the aisle.

I have no idea who the chap was, but, I reflected to myself on the walk home, it’s never a bad thing to have a handsome(ish) mystery admirer. And it’s even better to know that I’m not the only forty year old who was spending their Saturday evening shopping in the Co-op.



Post script: The occasional pedestrian-slash-domestic Saturday night is not solely the preserve of those living in Sheerness it would seem. The Cure even wrote a song about it: 10:15 Saturday Night was the opening track on their 1979 debut album Three Imaginary Boys. If you’re not a Cure aficionado, here’s the first verse to prove that I’m not making it up…

10.15
Saturday night
And the tap drips
under the strip light
And i'm sitting
in the kitchen sink
And the tap drips
drip drip drip drip drip drip drip...