inspiration - chapter 2

Chapter 2

Belinda was quite sure how she'd come to be half-way down an escalator in Woolworth's. She'd just spent 4 hours trailing round town looking for a butter dish and she was thoroughly peeved. Oh yes, plenty of places had butter dishes but they were all too small or too large, or a strange shape, or just the wrong shade of violet. She'd spent 25 minutes in that last shop trying to explain to the shop assistant exactly why the chromium plated butter dish was not suitable to her exact requirements (it clashed with her kitchen curtains) and why the shop in question really should listen to the needs of its customers before putting chromium on everything. As she silently fumed to herself she was rather shocked to see a funny little man in a lion-skin cape passing her on the other escalator. Intrigued, she turned her head to watch him. He appeared to be a little disorientated - he seemed to be flailing a lot - and she was more than a little amused when he reached the top and went headfirst into a pile of saucepans. She was even more amused when, one by one, the saucepans clattered down on the funny little man's head. She was not at all amused when she was shot right between the eyes by a little green man with a water pistol.

In fact she was distinctly unamused and told the little green man so in no uncertain terms, before her brain cross-referenced with her eyes and caught up with her mouth, finally telling her sense of balance that she should slowly and majestically keel over in a dead faint. Fortunately by now she had already reached the bottom of the escalator or she would certainly have done so rather quicker than planned. Equally fortunately she managed to fall onto soft grass, quite a feat in the music section of Woolworths. As her brain finally gave up telling her eyes that little green men didn't exist, the last thing she saw was a well-thumbed paperback. Clearly visible in large gold letters was the name "Agatha Christie"