Sugar, by Carly Nugent

I’ve just read Carly Nugent’s Young Adult novel, Sugar. Its protagonist, Persephone, aged sixteen, is initially bleak, confused, desperate, isolated and flat-lining with grief. A boy at her school has called her a cunt, she’s punched him in retaliation and they’re both suspended. She wants to understand why she deserved this appalling label from someone she barely knew and determines to find out. She also discovers a dead woman on a bush track and feels a connection with her. Persephone wants to understand what thirty-year-old Sylvia had done to deserve her death, believing this will somehow explain her own feelings of guilt. 

Persephone is the only child of Demi, also struggling with grief since the death of her husband, Persephone’s father in a car crash, twelve months earlier. Persephone had collapsed at his funeral and was subsequently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. In her grief, Persephone conflates both events. She feels responsible for her father’s death which she irrationally believes she caused. Diabetes is her punishment.

Demi and Persephone are temporarily providing refuge to Iris, a nurse and her son, Steven, both sheltering from a violently abusive man. Nugent sensitively examines the dangerous attraction of such 'love'. 

Through these and other characters, Nugent deftly explores grief, teenage angst, domestic violence and relationships...

And did I forget to mention WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LIVE WITH TYPE 1 DIABETES? This was the thing for me. Diabetes is as much a presence in this narrative as any other character. Author Carly Nugent, herself living with Type 1, nails what it is to live with this dark passenger, with whom I've travelled now now for more than forty years. If you've ever 'sympathised' with someone's diabetes - 'oh, you poor thing it must be awful!' - or casually dropped some remark like 'my friend's dog died of diabetes' or suggested that a person with diabetes should eat lemons or cinnamon because it cures diabetes or... I could go on with a whole conference full of crap that I've endured over the years, you should read this book. Let Persephone enlighten you.

Not only is Persephone dealing with one of the hardest things for anyone to suffer, the loss of her father and all the other issues that beset any sixteen-year-old, she also has Type 1 diabetes as a constant companion. Diabetes, the needy child who never grows up and moves out, constantly ready to potentially kill you if you don't keep your balance on the tight rope, a metaphor which Nugent uses in Sugar.

I've often been grateful that I wasn't diagnosed until I was twenty-five. I had my own demons during my adolescence and diabetes would have been the perfect weapon against my family or myself. Type 1 diabetes is best held in check by obsessive routine. Even so it's a constant challenge. Nugent seems to encapsulate all of this in Sugar, where each chapter begins with a blood glucose value. For me, this added another layer of tension, knowing what I know. I was desperate to advise Persephone and save her, so real was she. 

I was totally immersed in Persephone's world. The characters were credible, the story beautifully written, including a great exploration of the power of the 'c' word. I could see the bush tracks along which she 'escaped' with her dog, Hermes. I've read books and seen films about Type 1 diabetes, but this is the first I've read that really connects with my own experience of living with this particular chronic illness.  

Warm regards, Carly Nugent. If I could have found you on social media I would have dropped you a line.

Correction: the dog's called Berenice, not Hermes 😊

Still putting the P in procrastination

 I sit at my desk ostensibly to do this week’s German homework; meine Hausaufgaben – my home tasks. Focusing on homework, when I eventually start, is mindful and has led to me swanning confidently around Berlin, interacting quasi-fluently with the locals.

I sit at my desk to work and I’m instantly distracted. Through the window my garden courtyard in the sun winks; beckons. But if I go out there I won’t get even halfway through my coffee before I’ll be disturbed by needy weeds and a lawn begging to be mown. At least pulling weeds I’ll be absorbed for the ninety minutes or so before my back requires rest and ibuprofen.

Sit at my desk, side-tracked by Blu-tacked notes and cards.

In front of me, a photo -card hangs on a lanyard. Al W. Athlete. Basketball. Australia. World Masters Games. 2017. My Al W. husband; beautiful human. Lifetimes ago. Tears.

Another card: RAIN. An acronym.

Recognise what is happening. I’m ruminating on Al; what’s befallen him. For no reason other than it was written in this chapter of the book of his life.

Allow the experience. Crying. I cry. I allow myself a few seconds of tears.

Investigate with interest and care. Life sucks. Parkinsons Disease. Lewy Body Dementia. Why wouldn’t I cry? I’m crying for both of us. Al doesn’t. He shrugs. Why him? Why not him? He said that when he got prostate cancer too. Not long after those Masters Games.

Nurture with self-compassion and care. Yeah, yeah. Poor me. It’s okay to cry, but crying doesn’t really work for me. Doesn’t provide any catharsis. I’ve stopped now anyway. I’m regularly astounded by my adeptness at putting one foot in front of the other. And weeding.

Another card: how do you eat an elephant? Bit by bit. This prevents overwhelm in my German language learning.

Another: perfectionism is the mother of procrastination – as is looking up quotations about perfectionism. Rather than writing that novel, memoir or even blog post. Too true.

Up high another card reads: Das ist mir Scheißegal. Quite a coarse German expression which I quite like. Google translates as ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ I think it sounds better in German.

Nietsche is there on another card:  …ce qui ne me tue pas me fortifie. That’s French for what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

Now about that homework.

 

 

 

Addicted to quitting

Sometime early in the millennium, I quit drinking alcohol - chardonnay - for a few months, just to see if I could. I counted the days. After several self-congratulatory alcohol-free months, I cautiously reintroduced it. Al and I were on our first trip away without the kids, who were then about 19 and 20. The Kangaroo Island wines were irresistible. What was the harm in two glasses? Clearly, I could control it, having gone so long without.

Two weeks later, I was back to daily work stress and self-soothing every evening with most of a bottle of chardonnay, carefully leaving at least one glass in the bottle. Why shouldn’t I drink?  I worked hard. I also commuter-cycled about 14 kay a day and despite years of living with Type 1 diabetes, I was fitter than most people my age. I didn’t have a drinking problem.

By retirement, I’d reduced my normal drinking to about two glasses of chardonnay a night. I relished that punctuation mark in my days. We’d had a rough couple of years since I’d finished working and wine, I thought, helped. Except when I was wide-awake every night after only 90 minutes sleep, berating myself for having stupidly drunk wine again, despite the absolute knowledge that it was ruining any chance I had of sleeping.

I quit drinking again in 2019. Seven months this time. I wasn’t euphorically alcohol-free – I was dealing with too much grief - but I felt in control. I cautiously reintroduced white wine one hot afternoon sitting in a piazza in Cordoba, Spain. Honestly, I was a bit bored. Wine felt right. I knew it would interfere with my sleep. So what? For various reasons I wasn’t sleeping much anyway. I might as well enjoy wine in Spain. Right?

Back home, into routine. One or two glasses of wine a day isn’t a problem, is it? Plus, I had a couple of alcohol-free days each week when I went out to evening choir rehearsals. Except for the nights I’d get home around half-nine and quickly down a couple of chardies ‘to help me settle’. Settling meant three hours sleep on a good night, then, fuck, wide awake, and cursing myself as I journalled that I’d stupidly done it again.

How did I become this addict? Why do I have this problem with alcohol? Why have I battled to control this habit? Could it be that the problem is the alcohol?

Alcohol hardly featured in the English part of my childhood – 1956 until 1964 - before we emigrated to Australia. ‘Adverts’ from the time, proclaimed that ‘Guinness is good for you’. In one memory, my mother, in her late twenties, is sideways on her car seat, legs out of the open passenger door, smiling, face raised to the sun, as she savoured her drink. ‘Ooh, shall we stop, Fred?’  she’d said. It had been a tease, a game that my older sister and I were invited to enjoy. Kindly, Dad – how lovely he seemed - parked the Wolseley at the country pub, disappeared inside then returned with a tray. Lemonade for my sister and I, and crisps, with a twist of salt in a blue wrapper and shandy for mum. He’d have a ‘half of lager’. I don’t remember hearing the word ‘beer’.

At home, as far as I was aware, tea was the drink of choice. Almost from infancy we drank tea with milk and sugar. If it was too hot, we poured some into our saucers, which was later discouraged for being a bit ‘common’. Lemonade and Tizer – bottles of ‘pop’ - were special treats. Another bubbly thrill that I associate with our maternal grandmother was Dandelion and Burdock; ‘sassparilla’ she said in her Yorkshire accent. We drank fizzy Lucozade if we’d been ‘poorly’ and needed pepping up with a bit of glucose.

Once after a family dinner outing, my mother, wearing her fur coat, fainted in the doorway of a Chinese restaurant. I’d gone outside with her while my sister, Ruth, remained inside while dad paid. Mum had been feeling unwell. I stood solemnly next to her. ‘She’s probably drunk,’ I heard from a couple of passers-by. ‘She’s not, she’s my mummy and she’s fainted,’ I declared, standing guard. So I knew that ‘drunk’ was bad.

My parents didn’t become drinkers and smokers until after they’d begun their Australian lives. Their late-1960s/early 70s social life involved beer, wine and Craven Special Mild cigarettes, mum’s dispensed fashionably from a black Glomesh case. Ruth and I practised our teenage smoking by filching mum’s cigarettes. Couldn’t pinch dad’s. He’d know and his reprimands, depending on the mood he was in, could be ferocious.

My parents drank beer – there’d usually be a couple of long-necks in the fridge – and wine. Wine came in glass flagons and was dispensed into a carafe. Sophistication. That was before the wine bottling parties of the early 70s. My parents and a few friends, all with kids our age, pooled their funds and bought plastic vats of claret and chablis. Dad had a device to cork the bottles. Empty bottles were washed and sterilised in the oven. My sister and I, with dad's encouragement, happily drank an inch or two from the tops of the accidentally overfilled bottles so the corks could fit. Fabulous fun; joy and conviviality. Mum was entertaining and flirtatious – usually not with my dad, who was cheerfully engaged in the practical tasks of wine bottling. At evening’s end, the wine was divvied up and the adults, fully tanked, drove their families home.

This was us being happy. My parents, ‘respectable’ good, church-going people, had our best interests at heart. I never saw them ‘rolling drunk’ or passed out. Dad occasionally admitted to having had too much to drink on a night out and had once confessed to parking the car until he’d recovered a bit so he could drive home. This was acknowledged as a bad thing; one shouldn’t get this drunk. Drinking to such a point was scorned. If mum was ever sick, it was because she had a migraine. As teenagers, we never doubted this.

I began drinking at 14. I learned early that I hated ‘the spins’ and even worse, vomiting, after too much. An excruciatingly nauseous experience with beer put me off it for life. My drinks of choice: apple cider, sweet Spritzig and Mateus rosé, Moselle, Bacardi and coke, whiskey and dry ginger, Advocaat and Lemonade and when I wanted to look cool, portagaff - stout and lemonade. With alcohol, I could socialize, joke, slide down stairs, sing and dance like an exhibitionist. My parents knew my sister and I drank illegally at licensed premises but accepted it. We were still up early for church on Sundays, where I sat in the front pew in my surplice and veil with my fellow choristers. I was developing nicely into a normal drinker.  

During my lifetime, I’ve pitied people who don’t drink, wondering what sort of twee fun they could possibly be having. I’ve generally had hilarious times drinking with others or relaxing solo-drinking chillouts in front of the television. I've sneaked cask-wine into dry church socials and a bottle of whiskey into a dry end-of-year school ball. Without alcohol, I considered these events to be unendurable, and perhaps they were. I’ve also combined my passion for wine with cycling kilometers around wine regions in Victoria, France and Germany. Healthy, normal living. And normal sleeping, well, for a couple of hours before the inevitable waking and self-admonition until dawn. Occasionally I’d stick a couple of fingers down my throat so I could vomit and stop the nausea. But this was only at special events, once or twice a year. Or so I tell myself. Otherwise i drank a steady, measured stream of chardonnay, which I started drinking in 1981 for ‘medicinal’ reasons: it had less sugar and I had-newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus, as they called it then, that is Type 1.

I’ve quit on and off over the last 52 years, like many habitual drinkers, to periodically prove to myself that I wasn’t an alcoholic, with all its gutter connotations. I didn’t touch a drop during two pregnancies but shamefully admit that my children were introduced to alcohol with their breast milk. What hope did they have? I protected them from all manner of harm, swaddling them in sensible swimwear and smearing them with 50 plus sunscreen. Yet we raised them in a happy, functioning alcohol-filled family.

Like so many, I succumbed to the lie, in advertising and my environment, that alcohol is essential to every occasion worth enjoying. I’ve never, until recently, considered that it’s a highly addictive carcinogenic drug that has altered my brain chemistry. When I was young, I didn’t want my parents to know I smoked tobacco and didn’t smoke in front of them – both smokers at that stage – until I was 19. I quit smoking completely at 23 and was roundly congratulated. No one ever encouraged me to just have one, because it wouldn’t harm me.

Just over a month ago, I quit my wine habit for good, largely inspired by my son, now in his mid-30s who quit alcohol completely six months ago. I’m resolved never to drink again having battled with my addiction for too long. For support, I've immersed myself in a whole new world of 'quit lit' and sober social media, something I've never tried before. 

Now I just need to quit banging on about it.

 

 

 

Beware: Mansplainer behind

I’d just cruised uphill on my e-bike*, a fold-up two-wheeler I’d been struggling to take seriously, what with its little wheels, sit-up-and-beg handlebars and toddlers’ pedalling radius. Truth is, the only thing to recommend it is the motor. Otherwise, it’s a toy, hugely outranked by every other road or hybrid bike I’ve ever ridden. I'd considered selling it. But on this day, I’d found a new love for my plaything.

It was my second attempt that morning to get across Melbourne to a ten-thirty meeting. I’d aborted the first after a three-kilometre ride up and down a valley and along a bike path when I realised my phone was still at home on the charger. Had I been riding my push-bike, returning to retrieve my phone would have been a sweaty struggle. I’d have cancelled my day out.

Yet there I was, breathing easily at the top of the hill, pleased with my little bicycle’s power.

Signalling to move right, I glimpsed another cyclist a couple of metres behind me. ‘You’re okay,’ he called, waving me ahead. As I waited for traffic at the intersection, he pulled up on my left. He smiled and nodded, as if we were companions on a Sunday jaunt.

I sensed him beside me as I surged across the road - you can do that on an e-bike. Fun. Then we were neck and neck, with him riding out in the middle of the quiet street. I couldn’t seem to shake him off, so I stopped trying. He seemed harmless.

A shortish man, riding a toy like mine, he had shaggy grey hair fraying out below his helmet.

‘You want to be careful riding that.’ Friendly, but unsolicited counsel. ‘Stay out of the traffic,’ he added.

My e-bike is shiny and still has plastic film over its trip computer, suggesting perhaps an old ‘dear’ taking her first cautious solo ride. Mansplainer bait.

It seemed my accidental chum was up for a chat so I resigned myself to it. Experience has taught me that perceived impoliteness can incur a rebuke. I shared my reservations about my new toy; told him I’d already considered selling it.

‘Don’t throw it on the scrapheap yet,’ he advised. ‘You just need to get used to the smaller wheels.’

Me, thinking: I’ve got the hang of it, mate. After more than 200 kilometres riding it, I’d had quite enough of its inadequate manual gears and had even swapped its original wide-arse saddle for something more comfortable.

‘I haven’t got a car any more,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got this’. His bike was vaguely similar to mine. ‘My doctor told me I need to get more exercise.’ He chuckled, knowing he was just throttling along at 6 kph, not even pedalling. He trailed one foot, like those ubiquitous delivery riders.

‘You should only ride on the trails,’ he advised. ‘You know, the bike paths? Moonee Ponds Creek trail? And there’s one along the Upfield train line.’ He was scanning a map in his brain and sharing it with me.

‘Actually, I’m a seasoned cyclist,’ I said. ‘Long time bike commuter? You know, for years I used to ride to and from work? I’ve cycled around Melbourne for ages.’ Just making it clear.

‘There’s the Capital City Trail. You can mostly stay off the roads. Drivers are dangerous.’ Apparently, I can’t be too careful.

‘Yes, I’ve been riding my whole life.’ I popped this into a brief gap in his monologue.

‘You can’t trust drivers,’ he warned.

‘I know. I’ve been abused and had empty cans thrown at me.’ Interesting? Evidently not. Suppose he could have been deaf.

‘Just stick to the parks and cycle paths and you’ll be right.’

‘I’ve cycled through Vietnam. A hundred kay on one day, and all over France and Germany,’ I piped in.

‘Take it easy and you’ll soon get the hang of it.’ He was leaning over his handlebars, his left toe skimming the ground. ‘Just start with shorter rides.’

We’d come to a roundabout. ‘Well, I’m off to Tai Chi,’ he announced.

‘I’m off to Fitzroy Gardens.’ We were about 9 kilometres away in West Brunswick.

‘Ooh, that’s a long trip,’ he noted, concern in his voice.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, accelerating at last, incredibly glad to have that little motor to make good my escape. ‘Byeee!’

* After heaps of research I bought a Leitner Libelle. Including delivery and assembly at a bike shop it cost just under $1500. Note: it isn't as easy to fold and lift as it appears in the video on the website. Who knew?

Get Back. Thanks for the memories.

 

‘I'm surprised they ever recorded any music,’ said my husband, Al, watching Get Back, Peter Jackson's startlingly evocative film of The Beatles' 1969 final sessions. (Streaming on Disney+) Admittedly, at times I too was wondering why they didn’t just get on with it. But they didn’t create like that.

I watched through intermittent washes of tears prompted by floods of memory and emotion. Experiencing Get Back was like finding some part of my own childhood and adolescence that I didn't know had been filmed.

The Beatles mostly comprised the soundtrack to my formative years. In the playground in Sheffield, England, my playmates and I pledged our undying love for either John, Paul, George or Ringo, a different Beatle depending on the day. This group stirred passions we couldn’t understand. My sister and I would wait expectantly to dance to The Beatles on Top of The Pops on the tiny black and white TV in the corner.

My adulation migrated with me to Melbourne, along with 'insider knowledge' that I imagined gave me some sort of referent power, clout as I navigated the alien dynamics of the Australian playground. You see, my uncle Bob had once been a bouncer at a Beatles' concert in Hull in England’s north in the early sixties, something I'd share when we children started comparing notes on pop stars. And who was Col Joye anyway? Some Australian girls were going on about him. For me it was the Beatles and Mick Jagger. I was eight.

I've never bought a Beatles' LP record. Too expensive. The records in our home were more Frank Sinatra or Dave Brubeck Quartet back then. No Beatles’ albums, but dad did buy She Loves You on a 45-rpm single, which we played repeatedly on the radiogram.

I’d learned all the words to Yesterday from the radio.  It was my first solo singing performance. Our grade 4 teacher, Mr Evans, the charming sadist, ordered his charges to either sing a song or get 'the cuts'.  (Imagine that today!) He'd line us all up at the front of the room and give us the choice. A single cut of the strap on your open palm or sing. No brainer. Other children’s post-strap grimaces suggested Mr Evans wasn't holding back. Me? I enjoyed singing and an audience and, do you know you can keep singing Yesterday for a very long time if you order your verses just so? I think Mr Evans had to threaten to strap me to make me sit down. Wonder if there's any connection between my solo rendition and subsequent bullying.

During the next four years, I evolved with Beatles' music, my hormones pulsing to the rhythm. The Beatles were simply there, usually on the radio. Mum called me inside from my play one Saturday morning in 1966 to listen to the satellite broadcast of All You Need is Love. ‘They’re making history,’ she told me in a wobbly voice, probably missing her home in England.

Aged thirteen, I attended a party for all the instrumental music students at my school. Old Mrs Florimel, my violin teacher, generously held the party in her gloriously shabby two-storey house – long since demolished - on a hill overlooking the Maribyrnong River. Someone had brought along the Abbey Road album which played continuously in the garden throughout the afternoon on a portable record player. Something, the George Harrison song, seemed to have floated down from heaven, the most sublime song I'd ever heard. Hormones? Perhaps, but it's still an extraordinary number.

1969. Sobbing in the schoolyard when we learned that The Beatles had broken up. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to feel grief. Remember how long life seemed and how grown up you felt at thirteen? How could this have happened?

All these memories fired as I watched Get Back. Jackson's three-part film is genius in its production values. The events seem to be happening in real time, all over again and yet we know they aren't. John, Paul, George and Ringo - and Yoko – don’t get me started! - are living in the minute. Obliviously carefree, apart from having to create an album and documentary from scratch in limited time. They smoke and drink through their days with no concept of what's written in the next few chapters of their lives. Ah, the overflowing ashtrays of youth in the sixties. Don't you wish you could still just smoke and drink with impunity?

My mind was in overdrive throughout the film. I didn't want it to end.

But this is the thing that bowled me over: the film allows us to witness the birth of songs that have become part of the canon. We see, for example, Paul playing the chord progressions of The Long and Winding Road before he's even thought up the words that we all know so well. This happens many times in the film. How is art created? You have nothing, you work at it and then you have something that didn't exist before you brought it into being. And The Beatles were well-practised, gifted artists.

Al, sitting next to me on the couch, was also a huge Beatles' fan. Watching the joking, chat, interruptions and delays as The Beatles worked on their songs, he became frustrated, wondering whether they'd ever accomplish anything. But I was transfixed, secure in the knowledge of the fabulous musical outcomes. My deep delight and satisfaction came from observing the creative process, despite the limpet-like presence of Yoko Ono. (It puzzles me, incidentally, that no one banged this apparently deeply insecure woman over the head with Maxwell's silver hammer. Too soon?)

Sure, I love lots of music, but The Beatles were my coming-of-age band.

 

Pitfalls of a Covid relationship

Anyone else settled for a Covid relationship? I know how it happened in my case. I wasn’t out there, interacting, socialising, looking around.  So, after much painstaking online research I’d convinced myself that this was it. 

Initially the relationship almost met my needs. We seemed to work okay together. Admittedly, I was feeling a little cramped and constricted from the start. But better than being without, right?

 

I kept up the pretence and strode out in my new partnership, but at day’s end it hurt and I just wanted someone to rub my feet and tuck me into bed.

 

Then that day when it teemed with rain, we had a bust up. I was walking on eggshells trying not to get upset, literally struggling to just stay upright with my head held high. I’d had enough. What were they thinking with this match?

 

I called the company to complain.

 

“I didn’t expect this,” I said. “I should have been warned. I was promised something watertight that would see me through all kinds of weather, not trip me at the first hurdle. I didn’t pay all that money for a fair-weather relationship. I’ve been ripped off. I thought I was getting something else. Where were the signs warning me about this?”

 

Getting nowhere, I called an independent counsellor for advice.

 

“Just work through it,” she said. “Put it in writing. Be very firm. Demand your money back. Or threaten to go public. They don’t like a bad Google review. It should work out but here’s a case number if you need to get back to us. Believe me, I hear you. Things like this happen all the time.”

 

Well, I tried all that without success. However, the weather had fined up, so, as you do, I thought I’d give it another go. Perhaps time would rub off some of the friction; soften the edges. Things would get more comfortable between us. It didn’t really help, but we continued to stumble around together, hoping for a better outcome.

 

Then suddenly, like dawn on a new day, lockdown ended and I could go out again. Everything appeared brighter on the horizon. I even developed a spring in my step, despite the tightness I’d been enduring for so long. Like a veil had been lifted, I saw that what I’d been subjecting myself to was just crazy. It was over. Done. Mark it down to a Covid relationship, one that you put up with during a pandemic but one that could not endure under new-normal circumstances.

 

Consider it a lesson learned. Reframe it. See it as a gift. I’d lost nothing except a little money. and what else was I spending it on anyway?

 

The relationship simply wasn’t a good fit. I ended it.

 

Those overpriced, allegedly waterproof walking shoes, that ridiculously turned into skates in wet weather, have gone to the op shop.

(I may have bought dud shoes that weren't fit for purpose but I won't out the company here. After I did my due diligence - contacted ACCC and followed their advice - the company refunded 30 percent of the purchase price of the shoes. And hopefully, whoever buys the shoes from Savers won't break their neck if they wear them in wet weather.)

Checkout Security Alert

Not much to do in this apparently unending lockdown, is there? But there's always the shopping. Anyone else relishing the variety afforded by a trip to the supermarket? 

Was checking myself out at my local Coles, when a tall young man, wide-eyed, with curls escaping under his cap, stood outside the checkout area in my line of vision, awaiting my acknowledgment. He patiently watched unitl he knew I'd sensed him in my periperal vision. I looked up to meet his enquiring gaze, wondering. Ex-student? One of my kids' friends? Hard to tell in our masks. He reminded me of a neighbourhood boy who'd now be about the same age. 

'I notice colours,' he told me. 

'Okay,' I responded, bit quizzically, continuing with my scanning and packing. 

'I noticed your colourful jacket!' A proclamation. 

'I'll take that as a compliment,' I said, scanning a block of cheese. My big raincoat was indeed colourful with its swirling pastels. 

'Please do,' he said, nodding politely before walking away. 

Some minutes later, he returned to where I was finishing my packing. 

'Goodbye,' he said earnestly, another nod as he left. 

'Bye,' I called after him, smiling under my mask. 

It was curious and diverting, but no problem. Not according to the shop assistant supervising the self-checkout. Apparently, with just a few baskets to clear and registers to routinely sterilise, she had time to be extra-mindful of customer safety. She power-walked over to me. 

'Don't go until he leaves the store,' she ordered, eyes alert watching his back. I glanced over. He seemed to be exiting in an unremarkable fashion. 'You can't be too careful,' she added. 

'Sorry? Does he have a reputation? Should I be alarmed?' He'd seemed harmless, if not delightful.

'No, but you never know.' 

'Don't worry, I'm tough,' I said. 'I used to be a secondary teacher. I can handle it.' I raised an arm as if to show my muscled bicep, hidden beneath my coat sleeve. Don't think my sense of humour made it out from under my mask.

'Just go straight to your car,' she advised, still checking the entrance. 

A middle-aged customer bustled over with her shopping bags to share her thoughts. 'Remember that man who murdered a woman in Brunswick?' Her eyes were wary under raised eyebrows. 'He used to shop here. Every week he'd come here to buy his Benson & Hedges Red.' 

'Did you tell the police?' I asked. 'It could have been a vital clue.' I was gathering my bags to leave. 

Both women eyed me icily before shifting position to close me out of their gossip. 

I left without calamity and haven't since spotted the man who noticed colours and brightened my day.