SIZING UP

Now Bloggiana's yen to buy a shop has taken over all else. And looking for a shop will take her mind off her other worries, she believes, those being her apparently insurmountable indebtedness, the falling-apartness of her horse, the sudden onset cannibal syndrome (SOCS) of her daughter's hamster, the fact that her new found life partner has chosen this exact moment to get up off her sofa, book himself on a flight to somewhere and spend Some Considerable Time out of Bloggiana's life and the other fact that no matter which way she turns, she does not seem to be getting any younger.

To this end, Bloggiana has been trawling through the shop brochures, looking at small shops and large shops and projecting herself, in her daydreams, into a life where retail is king and profit margin is his consort; into a life where she lives, dreams, breathes, sleeps turnover, where stock taking no longer has anything to do with cattle rustling and she finally finds out what on earth a bill of lading is.

All this is leaving Bloggiana thoroughly preoccupied. When she is not lighting up a cigarette or cutting off Tiggy Pott-Hunter's nuisance calls, she is perusing brochures.

What are you up to, old girl? I ask.

Perusing brochures, comes the reply.

Later one of the chickens craps on the Very Expensive Cooker when the lid is up and the dropping catches fire and smoke billows everywhere and flames lick out from behind the cooker and threaten to ignite the tablecloth and I stand there with a bucket of water in one hand and the offending chicken in the other and I can't see Teener but I can hear her coughing and my eyes are streaming and for a moment there it looks quite serious so I ask Bloggiana if she would possibly mind fetching the fire blanket.

Can't do that, she says. Perusing brochures.

Teener and I await developments with bated breath. We scrub the parlour ceiling and wipe soot off the floor and subject the remaining chickens to a Very Serious Chat on crapping - and we wait. Our Dog walks into the parlour smelling of dead badger and then he sits down in the corner to lick his back of beyond but all the same I can see he too looks expectant and he too bates his breath. Adolesco, home from school after his latest spat with Measly Twat-Sniveller led to a four-day suspension and a runic letter from his headmaster, pretends to fill in his Anger Management Workbook but all the same, we can tell he too is agog with expectation.

Then Borederella, Bloggiana's old friend from Istanbul who has come over for a few days to relive student memories (our collective favourite being the story of Bored (sic) mistaking a kilt for a skirt during a Hoffnung concert which Bloggiana was organising at the Edinburgh Festival and doing a very gay gordon on stage with a tuba), tentatively asks the Blog woman if she is making any progress.

Matter of fact, not making any progress at all, she barks. Only thing I'm sure of right now, that's what it's a shop for.

And as we all cock our heads questioningly to one side, the Blog woman replies, smoke-rings billowing from her mouth as she does so,

Why chutney, of course, what on earth hell else would we sell but chutney?