A better date

I was on a bus this afternoon and got off earlier than I intended, just before the indoor shopping centre, as the roads were busy and I thought it would be quicker, or take just as long to walk home but either way be much nicer than being trapped on the sunny side of the top deck of a slow moving bus. I was baking hot.

I needed some bread. As much as I didn't want to go into the Sainsbury's in the shopping centre, it was probably best to buy it now otherwise I'd only have to go out for it later. There's only three types of wholemeal sliced bread I like, and Sainsbury's sell one of them. It's been a while since I bought the Sainsbury's SO organic sliced wholemeal bread but today it looked a little too big for the packaging, the dimensions were different, and the surface looked like it was sprinkled with sawdust. The tag on the shelf said it was thick sliced but there was no mention of this on the packaging. I'd say it's somewhere in between medium and thick. I stood there handling it, unsure, looked at the best before date, which was tomorrow, 30th September. I would have liked a better date. I squeezed it a bit. It felt firm. I picked up another loaf, and squeezed that one a bit too. A member of staff who'd been rearranging the bread on the top shelf whilst stood on a stool must have noticed me and my predicament, went away for a bit and came back with another identical thick sliced wholemeal bread and said "1st October, a better date". I thanked her, said I couldn't read the best before date because I didn't have my glasses with me, and therefore wasn't sure how fresh it was even when I squeezed it. It was a blatant lie, I did have my glasses with me and I could read the date if I held it at arms length. I don't know why I did that, this is not the first time. I sometimes screw my eyes up at checkouts or bars when paying with loose change to give the impression I have really bad eyesight, inspecting the coins I've singled out on my open palm to cover the amount due, before handing it over.

I went to catch another bus home and ended up on the same bus I'd got off earlier. It had taken all that time for it to work its way through the single lane of traffic.

A woman with bags of shopping who got off at the same stop as me started singing, repeating the line "I want to be more than an ordinary servant".