Friday's painting...

...

Hospital visit done and dusted. Usual problems with not being able to lipread mask wearers etc etc and me very tired. So, I stopped at a food van on the way home for some  food...

I ordered. Food van man does not wear a mask, so no lipreading problems here. And the food van counter is the height of my head. The guy says and motions me to put my fiver into the ice cream box on his counter, and he put a small metal chip fryer in it. I could not see inside the white ice cream container, it was too high above my eye level. It was a bit windy, so I held the fiver until it touched the bottom of the metal mini chip fryer the food guy had just put  in the white ice cream container. 

But my fingers and hand touched something warm and liquidy. I withdrew my hand and fiver. The fiver is wet with cloudy liquid. Cloudy liquid is running down my arm, into my sleeve to my armpits and beyond...

Everything goes through my mind - every horror story and science fiction story I have read and seen, and my brain is writing scripts for stories and films I have not yet read or seen.  

It's alright the van man says, just drop the money.

I am still frozen to the spot.

He turns round from cooking my breakfast. Just drop the money in he says.

I cannot for the life of me let go of that fiver...

Van man turns around again, and looks hard at me. That has served me well, he said, I have done it since the beginning of Covid last year, it works.

Finally food van man says, it's only a week solution of bleach and a few other things I put in...

Brain says what other things...

He's the alien soul gatherer my brain says, it's that or you are going to melt into the pavement and never be seen on this earth again...



I have never encountered in all these Covid times someone who disinfects with bleach, and his special witchery ingredients all the notes and coins they receive. 

He might have warned me I would be dipping my hands in a bleach concoction of his making when I dropped the fiver into his fryer basket in the white ice cream container. Those images alone, with the fryer basket in the white ice cream container, and then touching some unseen unexpected tepid warm liquid as you deposit your money, is a total mismatch of images for the brain to analyse....