2001-07-31 - 3:11 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�"

In the midst of what is now national media hysteria and rampant cultural ignorance, I feel the need to share the genius of this man

A good start is HERE

If you're a Pixies fan, go HERE and download.

"�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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