2001-07-31 - 3:08 p.m.

�When they found your body, giant X�s on your eyes, with your half of the ransom, you bought some sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet sunflowers, and gave them to the night��

The best bagel shop in town is staffed by the most miserable, unsmiling, joyless wretches ever to handle pastry. On a good day, I�ll ask for my tuna and sweetcorn bagel (knowingly liberal dollop of mayonnaise, satisfyingly impudent use of spring onion), hand over the money and that�s that � needs, presence, the phrase �customer service� given not a flicker of recognition. Kind of reassuring, really. When I forget to take change, and hand over a not-unreasonable �10 note for a �1 bagel, there�s the indignant snatch as it�s barely out of my wallet, followed by the pointed but rhetorical �Why are you giving me THIS?� followed by the handing back of a teeteringly vengeful pile of the maximum amount of coins needed to make up �9. Annoying, yes, but I bring it on myself. There�s the laughably provocative sign saying �If you can�t see the item you want, just ask us and we�ll make it fresh for you�, though I�ve yet to witness anyone negotiate even the early stages of this procedure without being verbally menaced.

But the customers, we respect these unflinchingly uncooperative employees. But today, I witnessed the little man behind the curtain, a chink in the obsidian veneer of inscrutability. A man received his bakery items in the time-honoured stoical fashion, no words exchanged, no glances or hints at actual interaction. But he was a stranger, unversed in the ways of the bagel-harpies. �You fackin� miserable cow! Jesus, what a miserable woman! Fackin� cheer up why don�t� ya�?� I half expected the bakery to come crashing down there and then, the majesty broken by a sudden lapse in the willing suspension of confectionary-based disbelief, engulfing all inside in a kind of doughy apocalypse. But no. The face cracks, something approaching a giggle (practically a chuckle, in fact), a modest �I�m sorry� and�surely it cannot be�a complimentary smoked salmon and cream cheese. A top of the range freebie dished out to the heretic. I�m still trying to work it out, but the ramifications deftly elude my primitive reasoning.

�Underneath the star of David, a hundred years behind my eyes, and with my half of the ransom, I bought some sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet sunflowers, and gave them to the night��

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��and with my half of the ransom, I bought some sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet sunflowers, and gave them to the night��

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