It's a Mad World- In a Lancashire Accent

IT’S A MAD WORLD In a Lancashire Accent. I went to the Confectioners today, there was a long queue outside, a metre apart, and it had started to rain. The assistant behind the counter had shiny eyebrows, they were that shiny they looked like plastic leeches and her false eyelashes were that thick it looked like she’d cut them off a fringed velour settee from the 80’s, or a brocade, tasselled curtain pane. When it was my turn, I stood on the black social distancing tape, and said, “Please may I have a sausage roll” She said, “What sort?” I said, “One with sausage in it.” She gave me a fixed steel-blue look and said, “What type?” The muscles never moved around her eyes and her face was like an old fur animal draped round the shoulders of a wealthy woman from the 30’s, a dead glazed -eyed shoulder-stole. I said, “A rolled one.” She glared and the ‘Party Passion’ shade red lips tightened, as she said, “Large or small ?” I smiled weakly and said, “A large sausage roll. Thank you.” She went down the counter and with white plastic tongues, she picked up the sausage roll with one hand and placed it into a paper bag in the other, then swizzed it round twice as she made her way back up. Then she plonked it on the counter and said, touching her hair-do, ”That’s 75p!” I had a pound coin in my hand ready and I reached out from the social distancing line at my feet, just enough, for my arm to reach the counter. She looked at it and said, “Card only!” and then she plonked a card machine on the top. I tried to reach over again whilst with the other hand I fumbled in my bag and on retrieving the pound, desperately tried to find my card and having loosed it from the disinfected plastic wallet, I held it over the tech goblin, it beeped twice and stopped. She said, “Goodbye.” I said, “I forgot. I need a bag.” I sounded lame. She pursed, her now even more red ‘Party Passion’ shade of lips and in one movement, she swung on her heel, to the rear shelf, whipped off a plastic bag and said, “That’s 5p!” I said, “Oh?” and fumbled for my card wallet again. She plonked the Tech Goblin on the top once more, her chin now taking on a kind of pointed, jutting- out shape. The card beeped and I thought this is slightly insane. I said,“I can’t open it.” The bag was stuck together. She rolled her eyes and I think she spoke silently to God and then she snatched another plastic bag off the shelf and rubbed it and like Ali Baba’s Cave Door, it opened weightless as a flimsiest feather. Then she shoved the sausage roll in it, put it back on the counter and said, loudly, “Goodbye!” I said, “I haven’t finished yet. I’d like a cake.” Her chin became a dagger, the lips screwed up, the cheeks sucked in and through clenched teeth she said, “What sort!” I said, “An elephant’s foot.” She blinked quite a few times, the leeches dropped down, her body stretched and there seemed to be a-rising of her chest and of her gut. Then she said, “What’s that?” The wheedling sound of a patronising cut. I said, “It’s a cake. A cake made out of choux pastry, circular almost, cut in half with fresh cream inside and chocolate or coffee icing or caramel icing on the top. It looks like an Elephants foot. That’s why it’s called an Elephants foot.” She said, in a sort of mock-squirming way, “Do you mean an Éclair? The beginnings of a twist to the side of her mouth and her head took on a type of sway. I said, “No, an Éclair is the shape of a sausage roll.” She opened her eyes very wide now, the nostrils were flaring, the plastic leeches rising up, then they came down again in a deep menacing togetherness- type fall. She said, “We don’t sell Elephants Feet!” I said, “Okay, I‘ll have an Éclair then.” She said, “What sort?” I said, “One with choux pastry, fresh cream in the middle and chocolate icing on the top….shaped like a sausage roll, but, sweet.” By this time, I could see her teeth, set together and her eyes wide with the false eyelashes touching the leech- shaped shiny eyebrows. She said, “Large or small!” I said, very weakly, “Large.” Her heels clacked hard on the floor as she stomped down the counter, retrieved an Éclair with the same tongues, deposited it into a paper bag in her other hand, twisted the corners and plonked it on the counter. “That’s 90p!” I fumbled again for my plastic wallet in the disinfected plastic bag, in my handbag, then card ready and keeping my feet on the social distancing line, I held it over the Tech Goblin and once more its digital blind eyes see. It beeped. Then I said, sheepishly, “I need another bag, the cream will get warm on top of the sausage roll.” She reeled around, ripped a plastic bag off the back shelf, rubbed it vigorously until it opened, and pushed the paper bag inside it, heaved a sigh and shouted, “IS THAT ALL?” I smiled at her and said, “Thank you.”