Ah, Tesco on a Saturday. Is there any finer way of passing an hour than to spend it cheek by jowl with your fellow man, each one of you united in that ancient hunter-gatherer ritual that has sustained our glorious species for many millennia?
Of course there is. Any semi-intelligent person could furnish you with a comprehensive list of activities that rank above traipsing around this brightly lit consumer bedlam; licking the underside of a dog, for example, or dipping one’s arse into a bucket of scorpions.
However, Tesco on a Saturday is where I find myself, soaking up the myriad sights and sounds like a bored sponge, while my daughter tries to spend what little money I have on useless plastic tat (possibly made by children younger than her). I am surrounded by the beautiful people – even a misanthropic ball of spite and disgust like me cannot fail to be overawed and humbled by the parade of Übermensch that sashay up and down the aisles of this shopping Mecca.
Take, for example, the gentleman in front of me. He is shaven-headed and overweight, although I do not hold this against him, given that I am less than hirsute myself and certainly no sylph. Instead, what grabs my attention is his backside. It is a thing of malevolent magnificence.
Now, before we go any further, you should know that I am not an admirer of male bodies. I find nothing about them attractive and in my wilder flights of fancy have seriously considered the notion that both heterosexual women and homosexual men are suffering from the same freakish ocular handicap that renders the ridiculous male form in some way inviting. But this man’s bumcakes are mesmerising, holding my gaze like Khan the snake held Mowgli’s.
The cause of the problem is clear to even the most nonchalant observer and can be traced to the absence of two items – the first of these being a belt. The gentleman’s jeans are heading south or, at least, have been heading south and have now come to rest, halfway down his not insubstantial buttocks.
Now I am, presumably much like you, aware of a style of dress among young idiots in which the trousers are deliberately worn in just this way, seemingly to demonstrate the wearer’s arse, in the manner of a female baboon offering up her rear end to a tumescent male. But the possibility that the man in front of me is among this particular band of morons is emphatically ruled out by the absence of a second item of clothing – to wit, his underpants.
Of course, he could well have been wearing something beneath his Florence & Freds but, sadly, whatever was there was not immediately visible and my eyes and brain were being assaulted by the sight of the top half of his naked gluteus maximus, which now seemed to be making a bid for freedom, straining against the bonds of its denim prison like an angry, hairy blancmange. Indeed, there was more hair on the fellow’s sit-upon than could be seen on his head - although, in the same way as my previous mention of his weight, this should be taken as an observation rather than a criticism (people in glass houses etcetera).
The problem I now have is that I have become sucked into the drama of these remarkable trouser difficulties and now I can’t stop looking, simultaneously intrigued as to what will happen when the trousers hit the floor and terrified of what will be revealed. Surely his lumbering gait will serve to persuade his jeans to continue their downward trajectory? Or will his powerful mudflaps serve to keep them where they are?
Watch this space for the next (possibly quite exciting) episode…
