Envy

Picture it. Yours truly is standing, waiting to be served, behind a tidy wee woman in the local shop (for local people.)

This wee tidy woman, neat in pressed trousers, an ironed blouse and a cropped pewter-grey haircut receives her change. She takes it, places the notes in the appropriate note part of her wallet. She puts the coins in the appropriate coin part of her wallet. She zips her wallet, she folds it over, she snaps it shut, she puts it in the appropriate part of her handbag, she zips her handbag, she folds it over, she snaps it shut. She takes her shopping, she leaves. I look daggers at her, I mutter, I wish her and her ironed blouse and her fat, beige bum, and her pewter hairdo dead and in her neat, well-kept grave.

I stand there with my newly-washed, still wet hair and my jeans that are covered in pig slabbers and mud and I buy my Sunday paper and my toilet roll and I hand over four pounds and receive five pence change which I stuff in the pocket of my pig-smeared jeans and I leave with a heart full of hate for the neat, well-pressed woman. And then I think…. I bet that woman hasn’t lost her debit card twice in the past month.