Saved by Love

There was a woman surrounded by a gaggle of children at the supermarket checkout. Her groceries were loaded on the belt, her trolley had been pushed through for one of the children to start loading bags. A frisson ran through the group. The children fluttered around the woman and she looked around in confusion. Taking notice of them, I caught what she was saying.

"Oh no, oh no. All right, go and grab some, one each." The boy she was talking to looked doubtful. The woman pointed. "Look, aisle fourteen, just over there, run, quick!" The boy ran.

Once I'd started listening to the woman, I couldn't stop. Nor could she stop talking. She told the checkout girl that the boy had gone to get some of the new Twisties, they love them, the kids, it's a treat while they're staying with her for the summer holidays, they were going to the beach but it was too cold this morning so they're going to watch a DVD this afternoon and they'll eat their Twisties as a snack, it's lovely having the grandkids for the summer and their parents are coming to pick them up this weekend, not long now until school goes back, and was the checkout girl on school holidays too? And all the while she was constantly moving, rearranging the groceries on the belt, moving the fruit together and the cold goods up the front and picking up things and putting them down.

The checkout girl put all the groceries through, and the boy wasn't back yet. The woman didn't know what to do. "Oh, oh, he's taking his time, how hard can it be to find? Go and get him," she said, and the three younger children ran off to aisle fourteen. The woman sighed. "I shouldn't have done that, they won't be back, will you mind my bag, love?" This she said to me, pushing her trolley, with her handbag sitting on top, at me. She ran after them.

The checkout girl and I shrugged at each other, laughing, and she said, "They're getting Twisties, it won't take long."

The woman came back in less than a minute, surrounded by children and holding four small bags of Twisties, which she put on the belt for the checkout girl to scan. The woman said to me, "Thanks, love, have you tried these?"

I said, "Twisties? Yes."

She said, "No, no, it's a new flavour, cheesy popcorn Twisties, the kids love them, even more than Twisties, it's popcorn with cheese, not Twisties at all, popcorn—oh!" While she been talking, the checkout girl told her the total, and she scanned her card and started poking the buttons on the machine. She had been too busy telling me about the cheese popcorn Twisties to pay attention to what she was doing.

The checkout girl said, "Wrong account? That's okay we can start again."

The woman said, "I didn't mean to do the wrong button, it's moved, it isn't normally there."
The girl explained that they'd recently upgraded the software and the screens look different. The woman made a series of dithery "oh" noises, and finished her transaction. Then, because the children hadn't been putting her bags of groceries in the trolley, she had to do it, and she was still there when I paid and took my one bag of cat food tins out.

And that's the latest instalment in my ongoing series, "Meeting Old People at the Supermarket".

(Popcorn Twisties sound AWFUL.)