I stood in the car park at five o'clock, 75 miles from home. My partner was 30 miles further away with the car keys, at some hospital where her youngest daughter was in labour. I did the sums in my head and realised that to go home by taxis and trains would take almost five hours. I tried her mobile one more time. It was still off. She had only kept it turned on to wait for news of the hospitalisation.
I could get a taxi to the station, head off by train to the town where partner and daughter were groaning in sympathy, get a taxi at the far end, search all the hospitals for a large pregnant woman until I found them, extract the keys, get another taxi, train and taxi back to where I stood, unlock the car, and drive home. Adding the times up gave me six hours, if I struck lucky with the hospital first time. My best hope was to find a hotel or bed and breakfast, hopefully with a washing machine and clothes drier, or buy some fresh clothes.
The final stone to sink my liferaft also thudded into my brain, I didn’t know youngest daughter’s full name. She had changed it by deed poll recently to a Chinese-sounding combination that I vaguely knew as Ducks-in-Alsaska, but that might not be enough for me to answer the receptionist’s inevitable question; “How do you spell that?”
I walked down the road to the hotel where I sometimes had lunch and asked if they had any rooms available. They didn't, but they sent me off to somewhere that did. I booked my room, and asked about the laundry facilities. They were contracted out, one day a week. I wondered for a while about going to work in a sheet for a toga and claiming it was for charity.
Across the dual-carriageway I could see a supermarket. Let's forget about the name for a while, for good, in fact. I dodged the traffic and the trolleys in the car park, and headed for the clothes section. Disaster rose before my eyes and floated gloating over rack upon rack of ladies clothes. I circled them twice, and walked along every aisle both forwards and backwards, but there wasn't a single item of clothing suitable for a medium sized normal male.
I was trapped, work-weary and unwashed, miles from home, and had been awake since half-past five that morning. It was now nearly seven o’clock at night, I was starving and desperate for a shower. I had no choice left to me, I was going to have to cross-dress. I spotted socks that I could probably fit on my plod-sized feet, a white top with minimal lacy trimmings, and a pair of what looked like black running shorts. I reached for them, and alarm bells rang throughout the store. A woman's voice behind me said "Would you please put those back and go outside at once."
I turned round to try and bluff my way out, (I sneezed by accident and was brushing the mucus off), when I noticed everybody else was moving to the exits. It was only a fire alarm.
The fire brigade turned up in less than five minutes, and clumped up and down the aisles before clumping back out and announcing to the manageress that “It was only a false alarm in the detector system. Again.”
They sat in their engine while the manageress spoke on her mobile. I waited for another five minutes, expecting business to resume. Around me, the crowd of shoppers began to drift away. Puzzled, I went over to the manageress and asked her when we could go back and carry on shopping.
“It won’t be for another two hours” I was told.
“Why?” I asked, “it’s only a faulty sensor, I heard what the fireman told you.”
“That’s true,” she replied, “but company policy says that customers and staff are not allowed back inside until the alarm system has been reset by the engineers.”
“And how long is that going to take?” I asked.
“About ten minutes. But they’re based in -,” (she named a town nearly fifty miles away), “ so they’ll take over an hour to get here.”
I could have stood there for all that time, pressing her further; why, for instance, pick a company that far away for such an essential service? And the fireman had said “again” in a very telling tome of voice when he gave his report, how many times a week did they have these false alarms? But I was on a mission, and I thought about trying one last time to get into the stores.
Supposing, since neither she nor I were allowed back into the stores, one of the firemen went back inside to get me three items of clothing from the ladies underwear section. Could I explain, man to woman, about my muddle-headed partner and the keys? Or about my need to wear women’s clothing for just a day?
Could I try saying, as a desperate tactic, "Would you understand it if I said I was a straight man trapped in a transvestite's body, desperate for a change of underwear?"
And what would the fireman say who was nominated to go and pick my choice for me? I couldn’t do it. I left
I would love to be able to come up with a ending in keeping with story so far; let’s say I managed to gain the sympathy of several of the other women shoppers forced out on the pavement with me, and got them to take me home with them and wash my clothes in return for me putting plugs on their kettles and fixing their fish-tanks so the pumps didn’t go purr-purr all through the night; but in reality, I solved my problem in a much more mundane manner.
I walked to the station, about a mile, caught a train into the next town, walked to the big supermarket, about another mile, found they had a men’s sportswear section, walked the mile back to the station, caught another train back, walked the remaining mile back to the hotel, and at eleven o’clock that night, finally had my shower.
Next morning, my partner turned up at work. I was already there, in my trendy men’s sports clothing, looking like a gangsta-rappa in the middle of all the other suits and ties.
“What do you think you’re playing at?” she asked.
“Where are the keys?”
“Oh, those; well, we knew you’d think of something, so we weren’t too worried about you.”
“I’m flattered by your confidence in me. And how is the swollen little one?”
“Still swollen. They say she’s not quite ready yet, so they’ve sent her home again. I’m sorry about taking the keys, I’ll make it up to you somehow.”
Oh yes, you will, my petal, you will. Gonna strap my bitch up, strap my bitch up, strap … my … bitch … up.
