What went on in Next ... and what came next.

First a sliding glimpse of man pulling basket on a trolley:  disabled or a shelf-stacker?  For a while we unintentionally played hide and seek between the ‘sleepwear’ racks.  Then he spoke - the voice instantly alerting me to more interesting possibilities, a preference for seeking more than hiding.

I looked, I saw, a most ... desirable face: crinkled, smiling sloe-black eyes, tousled hair, stubbled chin, good-humoured smile, however (and of course!) it was to his wife he spoke.  They were happily Christmas shopping:  she a list,  he laughing and agreeing what to buy for who (‘pyjamas for the girls and we’ll stick with what we’ve got for Marianne’).

Sour and silently snarling, with nothing bought off the list that I make and I solitary buy (and source, and solitary wrap) I left the shop.  Stomped back down to Morrisons where my husband, having finished the usual weekly grocery shopping, greeted me with an ever-loving smile.