fiftyfreeandsingle

Sometimes you just have to ask, Why?

It happened yesterday, Sainsbury’s Ladbroke Grove, yes Sainsburys again. Strange things happen to me in Sainsbury’s. Yesterday was no exception. Over the last two decades I have spent much time and rather a lot of money in this emporium.  Indeed had a photographer taken a photo of me each time I exited along with my purchases it would do just as well in describing the passage of my life over two decades as any written words would achieve. My shopping would tell my story.

Back in the first half of the 1990’s  my trolley was full of Pampers, Nappies, bloody hundreds of the things , those, wet wipes, baby food, you get the picture, spin on a few years and one of my roles, apart form hunter/gather of food for the household was making packed lunches for my son at primary school, I was always trying to make his lunchbox vaguely intersting ( note to self, ask son if my packed lunches were good/bad/indifferent ). With time the shop got bigger, as the boy increased in size so did food intake. Apples, my son has eaten so many apples in his life, he has consumed orchards of apples most from Sainsbury………………. as the years rolled by Hair Dye began to feature in the trolley, yes  the years took their toll  ( the dye was not for me you understand ) diets changed, 1/3 of the family became pescatorian, chocolate was always there, but with time we grew up, we evolved from milk to dark, Beef and lamb gave way to lentils and pulses. Then there were the purchases by season, the bags of charcoal and barbeque kits, summer holidays, paddling pools and suntan cream, or great big Bloody Turkeys at Chrsitmas, always the size of small dinosaurs. Then the trolley shrank during University term times and gap years, now its just a basket, for now at least.

But there I go again, off at a tangent, what I meant to say is yesterday, out I come from Sainsbury with my single bag of shoping, on the way out I see a man heading into the Supermarket, I just stop and stare, he is walking perfectly normally into the supermarket, but its what he is wearing that stops me in my tracks. He looks middle-eastern, not unusual in my part of town , but his clothing is, he is fully dressed head to toe in a military pilots jumpsuit, complete with name badges in Arabic, insignia, the lot, he appears to be a fighter pilot.

I continue to stare, he continues into the supermarket, giving me one of those looks, as he passes me as if to say yeah, what are you looking at?

I am trying to work out why an Arabic fighter pilot, in complete ready to fly apparel is shopping in Sainsburys Ladbroke Grove on a Tuesday evening. I dont ask, but I would just like to know, why, why was he there?

Had he been flying over the Arabian Desert and taken a wrong turn, was his Mig Fighter parked on the Scrubs?

There is probably a very logical explanation, but I will never know. That is lifes lesson I realise, now only too late, had I just asked asked him what he was doing, why the uniform then my mind would be at peace, I would be satiated,  I would be a wiser man, after all knowledge is the light, ignorance darkeness. I didnt search out the answer and I remain in the dark.

Message to self, remember, seek answers or you will not become wiser, oh and another thing, ask if you made good packed lunches back in the day, corroboration is probably worthwhile to establish the facts. You dont want to live under an illusion.