GERM WARFARE!
Chris takes being useless to an art form – in fact he’s worse than useless…
With Christmas almost here, I’ve gone into my full seasonal useless mode. In fact, I’ve been worse than useless. Worse than useless is quite a thing – to be useless is easy, all you need do is sit still all day, do nothing, and it’s achieved. Worse than useless involves getting up and doing things when you’d have been better sitting still.
My day started at the checkout in my local supermarket, stocking up on my daily quota of mince pies and a couple of Cat Christmas Stockings (now I’ve got to work out who’s naughty and nice or who catches mice). I once pulled a vole out of my pocket in this very shop. As a result, I always feel the need to be on my best behaviour.
Being on best behaviour shouldn’t really involve throwing a multitude of used tissues into a cashier’s face, but that’s what I did. In my defence, I had no idea that my daughter had been recklessly using a bag-for-life as a car-tissue-bin during her week long snuffly cold. When I shoved other bags-for-life into that very bag, and strode off into the supermarket, I had no idea I was holding a ticking time bomb…
I stood at the checkout patiently waiting my turn as
Iwas stunnedtoseethecashier in a delugeof used tissues
an elderly lady searched for her purse. With “best behaviour” on my mind, I decided to get my bags prepared for packing. Briskly pulling the bags apart, I was immediately stunned to see the cashier disappear beneath a deluge of bunched up flying tissues, propelled at rocket speed from my bags.
The cashier’s look of surprise turned to dismay as she realised the tissues now coating her tunic were ever so slightly damp…
The elderly lady, finally finding her purse, looked up from her handbag and performed a full double-take at the appearance of the cashier – had she really been wearing a full box of tissues just a few seconds ago?
I apologised over and over but I feel the cashier would probably have taken things a bit better if the culprit hadn’t been Vole Man. I have form.
Next, I went to my parents’ house, plonked myself on the sofa and watched as a commotion unfolded surrounding the whereabouts of Dad’s recently completed paperchain garland. Both parents searched high and low, all around the entire house, but in the words of Dad, it had simply “vanished into thin air”. I didn’t join in the search but sat perfectly (and uselessly) still. Half an hour after their exhaustive search was finally abandoned in despair, I got up to make a coffee and discovered I’d been sitting on the paper chains since the moment I’d arrived.
See, not useless – worse than useless.
To complete my day, I sat down with a mince pie to write this column, and realised I was 28 words short. So that sentence made it up. Oh no, now I’ve gone over –