The Importance Of Looking Happy

My name is Eliza Anne Thomson. I am eight and three quarter years old. I have a dog called Amber, a cat named Bono, and a mum that I wish was someone else’s.

We are standing in the car park outside Morrisons ‘cos mum just got thrown out by the security guards. This sort of thing happens quite a lot.

It’s Friday afternoon and mum had just picked me up from school. We were in the car and her friend Tracey phoned and said she should get her arse down to Morrisons – something about cheap champagne. I hate Tracey ‘cos my mum says she fancies my dad. She sells posh underwear and my mum says she’s a slut from Moss Side.

When we got there, they told us that champagne was all sold and my mum went mental until the woman told her there was some other stuff they were selling for half price. We got to the checkout with everyone looking at us ‘cos all we had was bottles in the trolley. It took ages to put them all on the belt. All the people who work in Morrisons are white and fat and old and look as if they have special knees, or whatever it’s called when you’re not right. Mum calls them ‘Timmys’ and says they only work there ‘cos no one else would work in Morrisons, even in a recession.

The woman on the checkout looked sad and I felt sorry for her. She said something and pressed a buzzer and a more important woman came over and said to my mum she could only have three bottles.

My mum asked why, and the important woman told her it was a special offer, and it was Morrisons’ policy that everybody had to have a chance to buy it. Mum said it was Morrisons’ policy to stop the bloody Scousers buying it and flogging it at car  boots, more like. The important woman didn’t think my mum was funny. I noticed she had an enormous mole on her neck and there were lots of hairs growing out of it. It looked a bit like a coconut.

We put the champagne in the car and mum remembered she’d not had lunch, so we went back into the café. Mum had two sandwiches and a bowl of tomato soup and I had a toasted tea-cake and a yoghurt. Mum said she was ravenous ‘cos she’d not eaten since she’d been to the gym. Dad says when mum goes to the gym she just parks her arse on a bike and yaps to Maxine who has fake tits and lives in Wilmslow. He says the only part of her that gets any exercise is her tongue. When we got to the checkout mum asked the woman if it was ok to have two sandwiches or should she just have one so everybody else could have the chance to buy one? She didn’t think mum was funny either.

We sat down and a fat man who looked as if he was walking on a tightrope brought the soup. It was cold, so mum complained and when he brought it back she burned her mouth on it. The fat man looked happy as he walked away.

On the way out of the shop Mum had an idea. She said that there was nothing to stop her coming back in and buying three more bottles, and as long as we didn’t bump into the woman with the coconut on her neck, no one would know. I tried to stop her ‘cos I knew she’d get done but she went to two different check-outs and got six more bottles and she looked happy. That doesn’t happen very often.

Then she had one more go. She tried to be clever by using the self-checkout thing, but because she was buying alcohol she had to ring a bell so someone could check that she was over eighteen. Like anyone would actually think she was under eighteen! We had to wait ages for someone to come.

There was a huge security man on either side of the woman with the coconut. They were walking towards us.

None of them looked happy.