Opposite Poles.

I was engaged in my regular people watch outside Sainsbury’s today when I saw a young man and woman – around mid to late twenties – walking briskly towards the car park. The woman had jet black hair (a rarity in the UK) cut neatly in a bob style at collar length, but what most caught my eye was lower down. Beneath her midi length skirt she was wearing flat formal shoes and ankle socks. The usual attire for women that age is either shorts or jeans with trainers, and so I decided she was either from another time, another place, or was maybe a little odd. I wanted to make her acquaintance because I like people who are a little odd, but her male companion was thin and wishy-washy with fine, pale blond hair, so I didn’t bother. And she might not have spoken English anyway.

What was even odder, however, was the pair of men standing outside the doors. One was tall, thin, and around thirty. He had very long and heavily permed hair, and was wearing the oddest two piece suit in a random mixture of retrained colours. The top garment was tight and clung to his overly slight frame, and the trousers were heavily flared with tassels up the back. His face carried an overly enthusiastic grin and he was being equally enthusiastically interviewed by a fat, slobbish, middle aged man holding one of those little furry microphones which some YouTubers use. I decided that their brand of oddness was one with which I’m wholly and gratefully unacquainted, and so I gave them a wide berth. Heat and sunshine does bring the strangest of creatures out into public view, doesn’t it?