Saturday Night


Tell me true – you are Grand at Grandways
Grandmas shop with mini trolleys of single portion tins of beans and tuna.
Shoplifting in the cheapest supermarket in Leeds
Store detectives have hands on you
For a bag of cheese and onion Seabrook crisps
“It’s a code thirteen” over the tanoy
A small pool forming under the feet
Of the elderly gentleman
Who is crying and confused.

The checkout girls in overalls
In all the wrong sizes.
Mr Yellow, wishing
He’d popped to William Hills at break time
A roll of fivers from the cash wage
Packet already half spent
Small square brown envelope
Ripped and burning a hole in his back pocket.

The aisles of the cheapest of everything
Bags and bags and palates of white sugar
White sliced loaf, gallons of squash in neon orange.

No bar codes or electronic anything
Number punching all day
Type it in correctly
Or I’ll have to change the price on the next item

“price please Val”
Waving groceries in the air
Waiting for Val to run the aisles
Looking for the numbers.

Can’t wait till cashing-up time
A conveyor belt full of
Tuppences, fiftys and pound notes
Stacking it all up just as Dad taught me, into stacks of one pound values.
Plastic money bags from the bank.

Then it’s up and off and out
Saturday night up to Jane’s
Chips with her mum and dad in front of the telly
And the bevelled glass mirror made by Joe

After tea clicking down alleys to Corpus with Jane’s Dad
For the Saturday night mass
Then out.
Looking for “a laugh”, handsome distractions,
The chat, the music, the dancing, community.
Walking home up York Road because

We spent the taxi fare on a chip butty to share. 

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