Ordinariness

Donald Sutherland as John Paul Getty in "Trust"

An ordinary day in September. I press the button on our radio alarm clock and soon the droning voices of the morning news presenters send me back to sleep again. Discussion of Brexit has become the best cure for sleeplessness known to man. They should bottle it. "Can't sleep? Try new Brexit. Available at your local pharmacy. Now!"

At nine I am downstairs in my dressing gown creating breakfast. A big mug of tea, a banana and a bowl of fruit and nut muesli with three plump raspberries on top. Thence to the front room. TV news on. Computer on. Check. Consume breakfast. Check.

Forty minutes later I am back up the stairs. Don't you get tired of showering, shaving and brushing your teeth? It's the same thing every day. Rub-a-dub-dub. The suds go down the plughole and the toothpaste tastes as minty as it did yesterday and the day before that.

Clothes on. Hair combed. Shoes tied. Grab the bags, I am off to Lidl on Chesterfield Road to get some shopping in. It's pretty quiet and there are several free places in the car park. I have got everything we need in twenty minutes including strawberries for Nurse Pudding.

Back home I unload the dishwasher and put a burger under the grill for lunch. I put the shopping away and make a mug of coffee. Fried onions in a pan. You can't have a burger without onions can you? I catch the last ten minutes of "Bargain Hunt" and then get ready to walk a mile to the Oxfam shop. I take exactly the same route I have taken for the last four years and arrive at twenty seven minutes past one ready for my shift.

There are book donations to sort through including an erotic novel aimed at women. I spend two minutes thumbing through it. It's clean but the contents are rather filthy.  I can't put it on the shelves. It might cause outrage. I drop it in the rejects sack.

At two thirty I count the takings for both Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning then stroll up to the bank near Hunter's Bar roundabout. I pass a homeless fellow near Sainsburys. A few weeks ago I overheard him say to a passer-by, "Can you get me a drink please - I'm parched!" The passer-by agreed and then the homeless man said, "I'll have a bottle of Ribena - the purple-topped one. Not the strawberry one. I don't like that!" The passer-by said he'd get him some water.

Back at the Oxfam shop. An hour on the till. I am pretty good with this till now and hardly ever make a mistake. It's so easy to press the wrong button. The shift finishes differently with a staff meeting and volunteers I rarely see  have arrived to participate. The agenda is mundane but it stretches far enough to make me get home late.

A woman at the bus stop says, "Can you see what number that bus is?" And I say, "As I am not a peregrine falcon I can't help you!" She chuckles.

For once, Shirley is in the middle of making our evening meal. The bolognese sauce is definitely  too salty but I don't say anything. Just send it down the hatch without complaint. Whenever I have spaghetti at home it is accompanied by a glass of cold milk. That's not salty.

Then I come to this laptop and tap away at this blogpost. I am looking forward to the second episode of "Trust" on the television. It's about the oil billionaire John Paul Getty and the kidnapping of his grandson John Paul Getty III. The old man is played brilliantly by Donald Sutherland who was born in Saint John, Canada eighty three years ago. "Trust" is probably his swansong but you never know.