I went back temporarily to shopping alone, yesterday. Jackie has become a compulsive licker. Actually he always has been; enthusiastic about life in general, he leaps to lick our faces, his tongue keeping time with his irrepressible tail, its excitement about the happy state of affairs his life is, needing to be expressed. So, though we tried to remove that damn cone from around his neck on several occasions, since it was high time, because of his licking we had to put it back on. Awaiting the time when his wound was completely sealed so he couldn't do any damage to himself.

Until that collar was removed it wasn't really safe to leave them alone and unsupervised even in their playpen, we felt. So my husband remained with them rather than accompanying me to do the weekly food shopping at the supermarket we tend to favour, and I felt rather lonely without his company. In fact, when I'm doing the shopping I'm so busy looking around, selecting items to place in the shopping cart, that I'm hardly aware of anything else. Still, I hugely favour any time that we're together.

The shopping was three-quarters finished when I found myself at the dairy coolers. I heard a rough, querulous voice grumble "I can't find the lactose-reduced milk". I responded almost involuntarily, offering that it was right there, at the section I was perusing, since I'd just been looking to withdraw a two-litre container of 2% for my own shopping cart.

I looked up to identify where the voice came from, and there fairly close beside me was a tall, heavy-set, rough-looking man, a scowl marking his face in what appeared a permanent response to life's trials. "Get one for me, 1%", he ordered gruffly. I slide one, at his order, out of its slot and proffered it to him, and his response was to order me to place it in his cart, in a very particular part, and I did so, mentally shrugging off his offensive rudeness.

Then he turned again back to the large glass doors fronting the refrigeration unit, opened one of the doors and began flailing at a row of one-litre chocolate milk containers, failing to secure one and loudly declared their defiance of his attempts. I sighed, and said, just a minute, I'll get one for  you. He glared at me, and imperiously called over one of the overworked young lads trying to fill up the gaps in the emptying unit, from the warehouse side of the store.

Quite the trial to live with someone like that, I thought to myself; an ugly, demanding attitude would dampen anyone's enthusiasm for life. Then I corrected myself; the man likely lives by himself, fends somehow for himself, resents that fact of his life, and partially because he looks after himself isn't in the best of health, let alone the best of moods.