‘Mother’, whimpered Rick, ‘you told me to dance like no one’s watching’.
‘Of course, dear’, said his mother.
‘If I feel self conscious even when dancing when no one is watching, does that mean there’s something wrong with me?’
Rick shifted uneasily in his seat. His mother smiled knowingly.
‘Yes, dear. It does.’
Claudine entered each aisle in a state of anxiety. She was consumed with the obligation of duty to offer a smiling nod to the man who had helped her retrieve an item from a high shelf some minutes earlier.
Over four subsequent meetings since the high shelf retrieval, spaced about 90 seconds apart, Claudine’s gratitude-and-humility face had lessened in its sincerity.
Claudine knew that the duty she owed to the high shelf retriever would last through to the end of her retail experience. It was onerous. She would honour it.
Heinrich emptied his pockets at the behest of Brenda, the matronly airport security lady. A single, packaged prophylactic tumbled from his hand into the grey plastic x-ray tray.
A moment.
Brenda looked away. Heinrich looked away too, but a different away so they weren’t still just looking together.
A moment.
Heinrich knew that Brenda knew that packaged pocket protection meant one thing. Not that Heinrich had lain with another. But that he hoped to.
Brenda gently nudged the condom across the smooth surface with her index finger. Breathless.
I saw a man putting his jumper on while a woman went in for the kiss. The jumper came down around both their necks, so they were bonded by this love jumper. And I was going to send it in to be used in the opening titles of Love Actually but they finished making that movie in 2003, and I wasn’t recording it.