Doom of the Unknown Shopper Part 1

Thinking about death when shopping for groceries.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. How fantastic.

For a large part of my waking hours, my head is absolutely jammed full of utter effluent that clouds practical thinking and positive memories and plans. However, even knowing this, having full awareness of the need for head-s**t management, doesn’t prevent it occurring. For example, even wandering round the supermarket, it is simply astonishing just how such a head works.

Everyone everywhere seems to be talking about the 20^th century wars and the dead and the slaughter of young innocents and innocence. Magazine and newspaper articles, radio and TV documentaries and dedicated websites speak of the trenches that soldiers shored up with the body parts of comrades, and the excitement and readiness with which the young men signed up. All this is in stark contrast to the futility of their deaths which is matched only by the futility of their short lives, and people genuinely wonder how different it might have been if the Christmas football match had been the official method of conflict resolution. And King of the Dead is one amongst the millions who died, whose fame for being unknown provides a focus for grief one hundred years on, and a hope that war might never happen again, unless justified. However, all I can think of as I pop to the supermarket and cruise the wasteland of jars and sachets, is how great it would be to be dead and buried and no-one know who you are. The zest for life and hunger for adventure and excitement of early 20^th century young manhood, is diametrically opposed to the mental machinations of a mid-life crisis a century later, that has followed on swiftly from twenty and thirty-something crises, which were preceded by toddler and teen turmoils. In case you were ever wondering how a s**t-packed mind works, here is a little insight. Something big and important and of universal significance is being discussed in homes and pubs, at work and on the telly and internet, and there are souvenirs everywhere, and people wanting to find their connection to it, but all Mister Manurehead’s head can come up with is how great it would be to die and be forgotten, albeit universally remembered for being unknown.

I should point out that a head full of s**t does not equate with being a shithead. I don’t consider myself to be one at all. My brother-in-law Simon is…well perhaps that’s unfair. He can be a bit of a shithead sometimes and when he’s strutting and barging about and being centre of attention at public occasions, I think he’s being a shithead but apparently in this observation, I am alone. He is mostly admired in a way that people seem to when presented with noisy, conspicuous types in their midst. “Ooh he’s a real character” �" that sort of reaction. He’s not a perma-shithead, so I shouldn’t really call him one at all. Lots of footballers and actors are shitheads, and city types too. So there is a difference between being and going round acting like a shithead, and having a head full of s**t. I think it’s important to clarify and few things are clearer to me than the fact that my head, regardless of what I want it to do, loves nothing more than being cluttered up by pointless excrement that ruins my day, ruins other people’s days, makes me anti-social and want to hide in toilets, and flit about in supermarkets avoiding people, whilst delighting in the status that goes with being a dead combattant whose name no-one knows, in a prestigious burial place. God, this really exhausts me just thinking about it. The accumulated effect leaves me staring in a supermarket at items that I don’t need or want or that are irrelevant to me.

“Excuse me sir, are the tampons for a family member?”

Author's Note

There is a second and third part to come. Want more?