THIS SIGN HAS NO SCRAP VALUE

Couldn't resist a laugh at this sticker I saw on the back of signage in Rotherham's temporary Forge Island bus station yesterday, and had to share!

SUPERMARKET SWEEP (Short Story/Humour/Crime)

Chillax, grandma!

Cheeky monkey! Found his comment under my Facebook status this morning. I’ve got this new friend online, you see. Jack Hoodie Honeytrapp. Not his real name. Obviously. He looks in his early twenties from his profile photo. I added him when he requested because I thought he must be Phyllis’s grandson. He has about nine hundred Facebook friends; makes my thirty-five look a bit threadbare, doesn’t it? I’d say “ROTFLMFAO” but apparently that’s a bit saucy for silver surfers like me! A bit like admitting to watching “Shameless” or listening to “Slipknot”! That caused a bit of a ripple. I usually settle for doing a bit of this “LOL-ling” business instead. They can’t touch you for it!

This morning I’m doing one of my “sweeps” down the supermarket. Usual place, different time, because you don’t want to get too predictable for the CCTV. Not that they staff the cameras, really. Just dummies – staff and cameras! Last Tuesday I came away with a whole bag of kumquats in my big plaid shopper. Don’t even know how you’re supposed to use them! They didn’t seem to go with my boil-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce. I ended up throwing them away.

I always religiously take a snap of the “sweepings”, as I call them, before I get rid, to post on my Facebook. I love how you can set your privacy so only certain friends can see certain photos. I post all my “sweepings” so the other lasses-“Silver Sweepers” we like to tag ourselves- can compare, compete, and pick up tips from each other. Bit like a knitting circle, but with purloined goods instead of purled ones. “Nick one, purloin one,” that’s what I put under one of my photos, and I got loads of thumbs up on Facebook for that one.

“Watch and learn, sisters, watch and learn!” I put on as a little title under the snap of those kumquats. The other Sweepers were green with envy! Phyllis had only managed to post a really blurry photo of the packet of desiccated coconut she’d just pinched. Desiccated coconut? I ask you! That’s not even imaginative! She even nicked a pot of glace cherries last month. Lois texted me this short video of her in the magazine section shoving “Viz” magazine down her skirt (elasticated, naturally, with “inserts”).

“Put it on the website,” I texted back. No good just showing it to me. We all want to see what the others are up to, or where’s the fun? Anyway it was out of focus and you couldn’t see whether the assistant was nearby or not, so where’s the challenge? Lois is a bit of an amateur, to be frank. Fancies herself as a bit of a Quentin Tarantino, I reckon. Style over substance, I say. Just my opinion, of course, but as I started the “Sisterhood of Sweepage”, I think I’ve a right to my two penn’orth.

These little tables in the supermarket restaurant are very handy. I can park my shopper trolley up against the table just where they have that little tray-rack thing attached and as soon as my cappuccino and my pensioners’ portion of liver and onions with peas and mash gets brought to me by the waitress, it’s in goes the tray, down the side of my plaid swag-bag, no bulge, no stretch, onlookers none the wiser. Today there’s already a tray actually waiting in there, in the rack with its rim stuck out! I had that as well, no messing! It’s a tight fit, but a wiggle and a bit of manoeuvring, and job’s a good ‘un.

I’m sitting here and I’m wondering now if I should maybe have gone for the textured featherlite condoms instead. What if the trays won’t impress the girls when I post the photos after I get home? I do a panning sort of shot on my mobile showing the girl on the till and the waitresses beetling up and down only a few tables away. Pretty daring, but even I feel a bit flat just bagging a couple of melamine trays to show for a day’s sweepage.

When I get up to go, I can tell nobody’s even looking in my direction. I’m in my seventies and I joined Invisibleville, society-wise, quite a few birthdays ago! Every cloud, and all that. Back on the bus, the driver actually shouts back to a young mother with a double pushchair and asks her to budge up for the old lady with the tartan print trolley, and a young man lifts the front over the step for me as the bus isn’t one of those with the let-down hydraulic super-low floors. Young people today! No backbone!

When I get back home I put the trays in a good light on my kitchen worktop, pop my bill for the meal on top as a little in-joke for the girls, (they all love the liver-and-onions), then I take some good full frontal shots of myself sort of hovering in the background, on automatic timer, and then I put them all online with the footage from the restaurant.

More notifications and updates on my homepage: Phyllis’s grandson Jack has just become a friend of half the Sweeper girls on my friends list, including Lois and most of the others. Lois has been busy uploading too, I see. There’s a new photo album on her profile showing her in the store, grinning and pointing at some support stockings still in the packet, poking out of her coat sleeve – not poking out very far, mind, so you can’t really tell one way or the other. Then there’s another couple of photos of her putting on some of that under-eye miracle roll-on stuff. Then some pictures showing how much they’ve ironed out her wrinkles and that “under-eye area” we used to call “bags”! Except they haven’t, of course; her mug looks just as saggy! All that gurning and grimacing for nothing!

Lois usually misses the point, bless her. Maybe the wrinkle stick is a step in the right direction for her. I keep telling her the rule is supposed to be that sweepings have to be things we couldn’t possible have any use for. That way, if anybody starts to suss out what we’re up to (allegedly!), we can put them straight, tell them we couldn’t possibly have taken these items for ourselves. What, me? Your cuddly old gran? Kumquats, condoms, lads’ mags, they fit the bill, but half of what Lois sneaks out is too like the stuff she has on her shopping list anyway! That’s not cricket. That’s common or garden shoplifting!

I decide to do the double today. A morning-and-afternooner, as I call it. I have my cuppa and a digestive around two, then I’m off down the little chemist on the precinct. I can’t get my plaid trolley into the chemist, so I just take my ordinary bag instead. It’s even more challenging, in here, as it’s more hands-on, face-to-face. There’s always an assistant around, doling out advice on which cough medicines you need for tickly, dry or phlegmy, or they’re offering to reach you down the incontinence pads from the top shelf. Why do they put them there, for goodness’ sake? You’re blinking well weeing from having to stretch up there! Too much information, as they say. Still, today, I’m here on a mission, so I’m on the look out for something more unlikely. I go up and down the aisles, very slowly.

“Just browsing, dear,” I mutter, “thank you very nicely, forgotten my list.”

The assistant goes back to shelf stacking and I shuffle round the other side, furthest away from the dispensing counter. That new pharmacist always comes out glaring over her half-rimmed specs, asking people their address as if they couldn’t make that up! Amateurs!

I look on the bottom shelves. Gift items, false eyelashes so you can look like Cheryl Cole, Kylie perfume, hair straighteners. Lots of potential, but they leave me a bit cold, this afternoon. I want a real biggie to impress and inspire the girls. Even Phyllis seems to be lowering her targets lately. Desiccated blooming coconut, indeed! You can’t get slack, or what’s the point?

I feel a bit creepy, like I’m being watched. There’s a young man who came in after I did and he’s still hanging around. I can’t get into my stride with him malingering there like a bad smell. I think I might go with the eyelashes after all, or maybe now is the hour of the textured featherlite? Suddenly I decide to go for both. The false flutterers slip into my side zip compartment. The security camera’s on the other side of the shop. They have one that looks out into the street, too. I move off in pursuit of the condoms, but they are right opposite the counter. The young man in the hoodie’s still dithering about just behind me. Has he seen me go for the lashes? She who hesitates is lost! I’m just about to reach out for man’s best friend, when he’s leaning over my shoulder. He grabs a packet of some very boring looking Mr Averages, and then he’s at the counter, blushing and coughing as he pays for them. Quit while you’re winning, Rene! Don’t push it. I leave the shop while the assistant’s dealing with reluctant Romeo.

My mobile battery’s running down to the red bit, but I didn’t get chance for any photo evidence on this job, anyway. I could stick on the eyelashes back at home and get some shots that way. I watch the young man come out of the shop. I know what you’ve been up to, but you don’t know what I’ve been up to! He looks vaguely familiar now I come to have a proper look, but I can’t place him. I watch him till he’s back in his car. There’s another bloke in the driving seat with a policeman’s uniform on. Is this why we pay our taxes?

When I get home, there’s a private message on my Facebook from Phyllis. She says no, Jack isn’t her grandson, where did I get that notion? She thought he must be Lois’s grandson. But Lois says not. Lois has been asking Phyllis, “What are privacy settings, anyway?”

“GR8 2 C U 2DAY.L8R G8R,” Jack’s posted on my wall again. Unintelligible but sweet, as ever. More pressing, I’d better check up on Lois and her privacy settings! Apparently, she’s showing her sweeper’s gallery to her whole friends list, or everybody, more likely.

I’ve been in for a while when my flat’s intercom doorbell buzzes. I ignore it for a minute while I glue on my phony eyelashes with the special non-toxic adhesive provided. Still time for an upload or two to get the girls giggling before suppertime. I have my camera at the ready and I’m just thinking up a snappy caption for it, like: “The cashier didn’t bat an eyelash,”or maybe “Granny’s Allowed,” when the doorbell buzzes again, a bit too insistent, for my liking. At this time of day! Don’t they know we’re all pensioners in here?

So I open the door with the eyelashes half on, semi-sighted cos I can’t get my specs back on in the rush. It’s two young men with a warrant to search my flat.

“Mrs Irene Garland?” one says, and I can see he’s the spitting image of young Jack off Facebook, and the other chap’s suspiciously like the policeman in the car this afternoon.

I don’t say much. What’s the point? They show me reams of printed out photos they’ve downloaded from Lois’s sad little collection. They’ve already got Phyllis’s particulars. I haven’t heard that word since I last listened to Gilbert and Sullivan on my iPod!

My case comes up before the magistrates in a couple of weeks. They give me time to unglue my Cheryls before they take me down to the station. They are very decent and a bit apologetic for duping me into a sense of false security. Jack Hoodie Honeytrapp. He didn’t fool a pro like me for a second! Sitting in the back of the unmarked police car, I have a bit of time to do some serious chillaxing.

“Leader of a criminal internet web ring” is a tad erring on the side of overkill, IMHO, but it’ll look good on my CV! The other sweepers will have to settle for supporting roles. The boys in blue don’t seem to notice the lumps in my Damart thermals, even when they go through my handbag for contraband goods. In fact I chillaxed all the way back to my flat with a regulation clipboard, a couple of pencils, a small roll of “Crime Scene-Do Not Enter” fluorescent tape and pair of standard issue handcuffs, no key, but who’s counting?

I think I might give all this social networking a miss tonight and have a night in with the soaps. Or maybe “C.S.I.”

Ball-pein hammers and scream alarms: the shadow of the Ripper

Guess you know by now I'm a mad keen genealogist and family historian. Well, a few days ago I was watching that new programme on UK Freeview channel "Yesterday" called "Find My Past". Using the genealogy site of the same name, the show traces back the ancestry of three people before bringing them together to show how their ancestors' lives dovetailed in some famous historical event, such as the Mutiny on the Bounty or the sinking of the Titanic.

In this week's episode, two of my interests came together: family history and real crime, as the events that brought the three subjects together were the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. The three were descended from a journalist who wrote about the case in London in 1888, a policeman who was the last person, apart from the killer, to see fourth canonical victim Catherine Eddowes alive, and Catherine Eddowes herself.

Press image of what Jack the Ripper might look like from 1888

I watched with great interest learning more about these familiar topics. Much of the end of the programme was lost, however, when, with typical foot in mouth brain-foggery, I managed to comment to general hilarity:

"If that policeman hadn't let her out of the cells that night, she'd still be alive today!"

#facepalm#

Another real crime programme on the Internet, about our own Yorkshire Ripper, took me back to the late 1970s and early 80s while Peter Sutcliffe was still very much at large. His crimes spanned the era of my teenage years and young adulthood. Towards the end of his criminal career, in 1980, I had just moved away from my South Yorkshire home to attend Leicester University.

It brought back to me the sense of unease we felt crossing nearby Victoria Park to get to campus from the halls of residence in Oadby. I went home to Yorkshire by train most weekends, as my father was ill. The grip of fear stretched much further than the North, as it was believed the Ripper might move about via the motorway network to commit murders further afield. As far afield, we believed, as the Midlands.

Victoria Park, Leicester

I was in the University Choral Society, so couldn't always abide by the commonsense advice never to walk alone there after dark. Rehearsals were on Monday evenings at 7.30pm if I remember rightly. There were shadowy trees and deserted walkways between darkened buildings after lecture hours to be hurried between on those long autumn and winter evenings. My 19th birthday fell in the first few weeks of the autumn term of 1980.  If a friend missed a practice, you were often on your own.

All this reminded me of two things above all that we young women learned about during the time before the Yorkshire Ripper was caught and convicted of 13 murders  in 1981. Two things we'd probably never had heard of if it hadn't been for the terror his crimes instilled into women all over the country.

First was the "Ball-Pein Hammer". I don't think I can ever think of that tool in any context but as a weapon of choice of the Ripper! Also apparently known as a "ball-peen hammer" - for peening, what else? A machinist's specialist hammer for metal working.  My dad had one in his toolbox, but it was just a common-or-garden hammer to us before the coverage of the Yorkshire Ripper's reign of terror!

Secondly, there was the "scream-alarm". Back in those days, this was a slim cylindrical tin of compressed gas, like an aerosol can. You pressed it to release a shrill, deafening screech, useful, I suppose, if you weren't in a position to scream yourself when under attack. They were made glamorous and sleek enough to fit in your handbag or pocket. Aka a "screech-alarm" or "purse alarm". They came with a warning not to discharge it close to your own or any other innocent person's ear, for fear of causing a burst eardrum!

Modern scream alarm - mine back then was metallic gold

I recall there was always a temptation to let out tiny almost imperceptible coughs from the device as you made your way along through the darkness of the night, just to make sure it would be fit for purpose if needed urgently. So after a few months, most of the internal gas had dispersed and you needed a replacement!

Oh the memories. Nothing for us to compare with the way the lives of his victims' families were torn apart forever. But I can still feel the countrywide sigh of relief when Peter Sutcliffe was finally arrested in my native Sheffield on 2nd of January 1981. Choir practices didn't seem such a risk, that Spring term! Though we kept the scream alarms about our persons for some time to come, and never quite looked at ball-pein hammers in the same way ever again!

Poster showing the handwriting and hoax  recording sent to police at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders

What I don't know about wet collodion and Victorian post-mortem photography

I'm just working on a short story about an itinerant photographer who travels with his tripod and cumbersome portable dark room from village to village producing snapshots of the locals. I won't spoil the plot in case it is published one day, but basically, the sittings in one village lead to a crime, after which the young ambrotypist is called on to take an early post mortem photograph for the local constabulary.

I feel most alive when I am writing and never cease to marvel how much we can learn from researching our stories. In the course of researching this story, for instance, I've been discovering the developments that took place in the 1850s, when the early Daguerrotype process was improved on by the wet collodion process, particularly popular for its quick, cheap "instant" results. This meant that the image could more easily be replicated from a single negative. The glass plates for wet (and later, dry) collodion photos were also more readily available than the older silver-plated copper.

But its usually true of the research we accumulate for storywriting that it's better left in the background, to inform rather than hijack the tale. You DON'T want to know all about coating glass plates with silver nitrate and the dangers of working in a confined space with acid, bromide, iodide salts, alcohol, ether and goodness knows what else! Still less will the reader want to know about the gruesome fashion for "post mortem" photographs I've just discovered while striving for background knowledge. I now know that Victorian mourners often had their lately deceased loved ones photographed for posterity, even having "eyes" painted on the closed lids for a more "lifelike" effect! Some of the many existing examples of these memento mori are the stuff of nightmare and have no place in my own tale. Facts are facts, and anyone can pursue them. What the readers long for is a tale to inspire them, transport them. They want to know "Who did it?", or "Do they get together in the end?" or to encounter a host of other life-enhancing, challenging moments that only fiction can nudge their way.

What a joy and a journey! The challenge I've set myself in this story is to try to let the reader see through the eyes of the camera what is really going on under the surface. Of course, being me, on the way I inevitably become voracious gobbler of weird and wonderful facts that get stored away in my brain and imagination. Sometimes these things lead to other stories I never would have planned, often more intriguing than the original idea! Stories, like ourselves as writers and readers, are always open to evolve and change as we interact with God's glorious, endlessly gracious creative power. Stories give us space too to fix a snapshot of some truth within the rainbow of possibilities, developed like the photographer's negatives exposed to the sunlight of the human heart.

From the Open University's Learning Space "Arts and History" Unit on "The rise of the itinerant photographer": Image 78: Photographer/Painter: John Thomson. Subject: The Itinerant Photographer on Clapham Common’, from John Thomson & Adolphe Smith, Street Life in London, 1877/78.

(One of many excellent sites used during my research for the story mentioned in this post)