The Kitchen Sink

shoulders to his little office. And you hang on till you’re just in the doorway then shout: ‘COS I DON’T WANT TO SHOW YOU MY FANNY. AGAIN.’ He panics and you just run off. Next time you nick something though he remembers what happened and you can see him thinking ‘not worth it’, just lets you get away with it. So you can get quite a lot of vodka really, it’s no trouble. And actually I’m quite good mates with Carl now. He gives me this little nod near exotic fruit then in about five minutes he’s out the back on his break. We get pissed between the wheelie bins.
And I did show him my fanny in the end but. Just to say thanks but. He wasn’t fussed.
Today’s a bit different though. Soon as I come in he’s looking dead panicky, starts doing this, tries to sort of waft me back out the door. I just ignore it, plod on but he’s in a right flap. And all this wafting? And I can see him looking at this woman. She’s standing next to him with a clipboard and a little moustache, making all these notes so he doesn’t know what to... Mouths something at me like: ‘Go away’ but, I dunno, I just mouth something back like: ‘no’, head for the booze. I’m umming and aahing a bit but there’s signals coming off the Smirnoff so I know it’s the right one. And it’s buy-one-get-one-free so. Just ignore the bit about buying one. Check over my shoulder, tuck it in my pants. Quite a cold thing to tuck in your pants but. Never mind.
I can see Carl out the corner of my eye. He’s getting really interested in this peanut butter. Like properly interested. Like he’s getting a bit weird about the peanut butter, and the woman’s thinking he’s got some sort of thing about peanut butter, maybe he goes home, covers himself in peanut butter and gets local cats to lick it off. He doesn’t though. Just buying me time.

Shoplifting is a piece of piss. You just, you basically just: nick it. And then you get caught. And the security man goes: ‘What you doing?’ and you just have to say really loud: ‘NO, CARL’ or whatever his badge says. And if there’s any old ladies nearby, or nuns and that, and there always is, they look over and Carl gets well confused. Starts steering you by your

Good on you, Billy. Good on you.