[Sundae]

Shopping in Sainsbury's with Ma today.

They were away for the weekend, and I'm always at risk of drinking then. I tamed the cravings this time by laying into the Ma's stash of Caffeine Free Diet Coke cans. About ten. Not great for the teeth, but I could sleep and didn't bump into anything.

So I promised to buy her replacements along with my usual fortnightly shop. She wanted to come into town without Dad anyway, to get his Christmas present.

We're at the checkout. Mum is putting light things in her bag and I am loading the bottles, cans etc into my shopping trolley.

All of a sudden, from the perspective of Mum & the cashier, something is squirting them. Their inital suspect is a little boy who has been running up and down making a ruckus. Nope. It was a six-pack of said Coke which had just been scanned and I was about to pack.

I knew where it was coming from - I was trying to contain it in a bag. Everyone else squirted was just in complete shock.

Now I hadn't touched it at that point. And the cashier certainly hadn't manhandled it. All I can assume is that one of the cans had been damaged earlier and it just took a while for the pressure in the can to erupt.

Now the six cans were bound together in a plastic sleeve. Which means the high pressure squirt action went in about three different directions. It hit Mum, the cashier, the cashier working back to back with her, the other people in the queue, people walking along and all the shopping on the belt.

The person most unscathed? Me. I was behind it to an extent, and was wrangling it into a bag to try to stop the arterial-style spurting.

Poor lady on checkout. EVERYTHING was coated in Coke. Her till, her hair, her uniform, the belt, the area for packing bags etc. It will dry sticky and I bet there'll be sticky parts becoming apparent for weeks to come.

We could go home and change. She had to sit there til the end of her shift! Good job it's December, so at least she doesn't have to worry about wasps.

Mum and I left the supermarket in a state of near shock. But we consoled ourselves in a local hostelry (actually this was always the plan - we called it our works' outing). The great thing was, no-one was really to blame. At least none of the protagonists. So our humour, when it came, was untainted by guilt or annoyance.

And every time we pictured the Coke going a gusher and drenching all those other people we did start giggling. We're simple people really.