Enjoy.
Bag For Life
The tatty alarm clock rang at the usual time.
Brian reached out in the usual manner, and missed by the usual amount.
With all options exhausted, he rose.
He swung his feet to the side, and snugly fit them into his slippers.
As Brian got up, he heard a rustle.
He looked down.
His slippers were resting on a plastic bag.
The plastic was translucent from wear, emblazoned with his favourite shop’s logo, now apparently faded and worn with age.
Brian carefully flattened and folded the item, placing it in the kitchen drawer before heading into the bathroom.
The razor glided smoothly along his scalp, handle growing slick with suds in the shower.
Brian scowled at his reflection. The ideal way to conceal a weak chin would be a beard.
Unfortunately, his genes didn’t allow for such a luxury; the best Brian should hope for was a hangover-style set of stubble that added another year at most to his seventy-four.
‘Too late for worry lines now.’ He said, converting the frown into a vague approximation of a smile.
Breakfast came quick and easy while rain dribbled down the kitchen windows.
Instant porridge and instant coffee right from the packets into the dishes, his favourite.
Three spoonfuls of brown sugar in each, no more or less.
None of that granulated nonsense, awful stuff was full of chemicals and goodness knew what else.
One thing Brian liked about the future for sure, was how simple everything could be.
Too much of that thinking made his head hurt something terrible, and damned if he was making another trip to the pharmacist in this weather.
Enough risks were being taken with his newsagents.
*
‘Would you like a bag for life?’
‘Bag for life? What’s that?’ A grinning American tourist asked.
‘Well, it’s a bag.’
‘Allright.’
‘For life.’
‘Okay, neat. Thank you. I’ll come back if it doesn’t last.’ The tourist laughed at their own joke.
‘Thanks, bye.’ The assistant’s unfortunately-arranged face briefly slumped back into shape. The grin returned for the next customer.
Brian never brought his own bags.
Things like ‘environmental impact’ eventually stop having an impact once one reached a certain age, in Brian’s case this was sixteen.
Nobody knew what Brian did with his bags.
Neither did Brian.
But since things were simpler for him that way, he didn’t mind. After all, it was only another five pence piece and he’d already counted it out in the queue
The assistant had already prepared a bag and held it open for the usual haul.
Three television guides, a Mars Bar and the paper.
The assistant had an awful habit of scowling at the front cover of every paper he scanned.
Brian let it slide again.
He handed over the money.
Six pounds and twenty-four pence exactly, until it rose again.
The new note sprang out of the assistant’s hands, prompting a muttered curse word.
Brian thanked him and left. The assistant scowled.
Not this time.
‘Excuse me, the receipt.’
Bob turned around.
‘I don’t do receipts, thank you.’
The scowl stiffened.
‘Not for you, for the store. The bags.’
The assistant gave him a slightly more professional look.
‘New legislation, I’m afraid.’ He chewed the words into a smile.
The receipt printed, and the assistant handed it over.
‘To sign.’
‘What for?’
‘Legislation.’ He enjoyed bandying that word about, some part of Bob knew that.
‘All right, give it here.’ He said, motioning for a pen.
The assistant handed him a marker pen.
Brian’s face dropped.
‘Sorry, it’s all I have.’ The assistant’s smile carried several sentiments, sorrow not being amongst them.
Brian struck off a broad black scribble that looked nothing like his signature.
‘The pact is sealed.’ The assistant mumbled to nobody in particular, folding the receipt into the till drawer.
‘What was that?’ Brian said, arching an eyebrow.
‘Nothing.’ The grin broadened. ‘Careful out in the rain, British summertime and all.’
Brian brandished his index finger, cocked like a gun.
‘This used to be such anicestore, with nicepeople. And all this-’
He waved it around the lurid bright stationary displays, the polished fake wood floor, the overbearing 3 for 2 advertisements.
‘All this is ridiculous. I used to be able to get my magazines, my paper and I knew where everything was. This. Makes. No. Sense.’ He punctuated the last few words with additional finger jabs.
Another quip wriggled out from between the assistant’s lips.
‘I’ll pass your feedback on.’
Brian delivered the killing blow.
‘All the young people are messing up the world.’
The battle was over. Brian tutted, took stock and left.
The assistant shrugged and called for the next customer.
‘What was that about?’ They asked, bagging a fat stack of railway magazines.
Another shrug.
‘I’m afraid I’m not paid enough to care.’
*
Brian reran the encounter over and over again in his mind, the picture lined with static and VHS scan lines.
‘Not for you.’ He’d sneered, like he was handling a spoilt child at a wedding covered in icing and mud, ruining another suit. That little upstart.
No, the antagonism just clouded things. What if he could be indifferent? It mattered not to him what happened, right? Wasn’t a hazy sea of broad acceptance preferable to the knife edge of animosity? Brian mulled the thought over in his head, but facts kept getting in the way and digging in, covering everything in a clear plastic veil.
Plastic, plastic, everything was made of plastic.
It was one thing to start charging for the bags, now they expected him to sign for them every single time he had to go shopping? Brian wasn’t that interesting, he didn’t think. Certainly not enough for them to want his signature. What if he forged it, would that matter at all, if he did that?
Surely they wouldn’t come after him, he just wanted to keep his papers safe from the rain?
Weren’t there laws against this, or was the environment more important than consent these days?
Brian didn’t have any answers for himself, nor the time.
He slept on the bus home and missed his stop, necessitating an extra fifteen minutes out in the rain reaping the benefits of British summertime.
*
Brian didn’t have an unkind face, he thought.
He’d thought about it on the walk from the shop, on the bus back home, and while he dropped his bags and headed straight in for a shower from the rain. He could at least get damp on his own terms for once.
He’d always thought cruelty was this genetic kind of thing, that you could pick it up like a scent on people.
It was a kind of stale aroma, he’d always thought. Bad breath of the soul. Some people reeked of it, for sure and had it marked into every rough edge of their being, every line on their face.
Then again, some of the worst people he was sure looked like everybody else, they didn’t look the type.
A disease, perhaps. One that takes root in the heart and blooms in the eyes into cruel looks.
Brian didn’t think he looked like the cruel sort, his face was too round, his eyes too dark and cattle-like to suggest any ulterior motives.
Then again, he didn’t have his glasses on.
Perhaps he was cruel-looking.
Maybe age had twisted his features into a grotesque parody of themselves.
He might look like one of those Spitting Image puppets for all he knew.
Partial sight may have been a small mercy.
He didn’t need a bag for life, his face was becoming one for him.
He barked out a laugh while in the shower.
His wit was always sharpest when there was nobody around to hear it.
When he emerged from the bathroom, his shopping was already unpacked on the kitchen counter, the bag gone from sight.
*
Eastenders.
Corrie.
Emmerdale.
If there was one thing Brian could thank the new generations for, it was the wonders of Sky Plus.
Now he could catch up on three shows back to back, even without the advertisements if he wanted to.
But he didn’t. He liked the advertisements. They had a purpose still, to give him adequate time for a toilet break.
In between shows, Brian ate.
First the steak and kidney pie, with real ale sauce according to the packaging.
Brian’s preference for sauce over gravy surely marked him out as an eccentric, he thought.
Gravy was too runny, and heaven knew what they’d put in the stuff.
The chips were from the local place, double-fried and somewhat moist.
Brian liked to remove the pastry lid from the pie, then get the largest chips and dunk them in the steaming sauce, biting them off like wet matches.
The synthesised drum beats coming from the television set signalled to Brian that it was time for a second toilet break. He’d grab another can of bitter from the kitchen on the way back to wash down dinner.
Washing up could wait.
Maybe he could get one of those dishwashers from the advertisements.
He could probably afford it, just cut back on a few luxuries.
Maybe switch over to oven chips for a start.
The thought of having a goal brought a small smile to his face.
Once he got into the small bathroom, the smile collapsed.
There was the bag from earlier.
It lay on the bathroom mat.
All smoothed out and empty, no creases.
Brian shook the thought from his mind as quickly as it had formed.
He folded the bag back up and stuck it in the kitchen drawer and paid no more mind to it.
*
Back on the bus home the next day, Brian had scoured the town for his sister’s birthday presents.
She’d sent him a letter with an attached list.
For once, the list was thorough.
She’d had to send the list as a large letter.
Bag in hand, packed with the usual haul.
Brian had added on a whim an anniversary copy of the Radio Times.
Brian was drifting off to sleep, when a sharp set of fingers tapped his shoulder.
‘Excuse me, can you take your bag off that seat please?’
He blinked and adjusted his glasses.
‘I’m sorry?’
The lady nodded at the seat, hard to do much else with two bags loaded with groceries.
Sure enough, there was a plastic bag on the seat.
His bag, yes, but not the one he set off with.
It was too old, surely.
The logo was tattered and torn, the lettering distorted on the plastic and curving vaguely upward.
But upon rummaging through his shopping, he retrieved a signed receipt complete with a marker pen scrawled mockery of his signature, marked with today’s date.
The ink had smudged, leaving an ugly smear across a photo of a celebrity it was probably no longer fashionable to like anymore.
The assistant had likely fished a grotty one out of the basement to spite him.
Brian was grateful that’d he’d never made the mistake of having children.
The young might eat the old, but not him.
*
Brian leaned back on the toilet, eyes closed and listening to his breathing slowing back to resting rate.
A white shape hung on the back of the door.
Several shapes.
Bags for life hung like bats from the door, walls and ceiling.
The logos grinned at him, letters distorted and pointed like mouthfuls of broken teeth.
Brian didn’t know where to look.
Certainly not behind him.
The thin white polyethylene enveloped his head, sealing itself tight.
He could feel the lightheadedness set in, each breath growing shallower, the strength sapping from his limbs.
Sleep came easily.
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