Retail days...

In the vein of revisiting old uni haunts and taking the proverbial trip down memory lane, this morning I ran into Ollympic Runner. We used to work together at Gowings- him upstairs in the Fishing Department; me downstairs in the Accessories Department.

I was 19 at the time, and thought this casual job was a marvellous invention. Sure, the store was targeted at middle aged men obsessed with kitsch toys, Orgasmatrons and Drizabones, but the pay was crazily good by my own youthful standards and the store was large enough to allow me to "go missing" when the Sunday morning shift dragged on.

I run into Ollympic Runner pretty infrequently. He actually lives about two minutes away, but has recently decided to split his time between two minutes away and Belmore, where his lady love lives.

Generally, our catch-ups happen on the morning train, on the walk back from the evening train, and sometimes at the shops. He's a rather deadpan fellow and his sensible approach to things against my easily distracted and loopy thoughts make for some funny conversations. This morning, I pointed out the huge pimple in between my eyebrows while Ollympic Runner declared his intentions to partake in the upcoming May Half-Marathon:

"Underneath all that concealer, my pimple is really really red. It's like the colour of--

(I searched for something really red, I looked at other people's outfits, at my own outfit and without an inch of red to be found, discovered that my watch had irritated the skin underneath to provide the perfect vermillion colour sample)

this! It's like this red!"

Naturally, he gave a long suffering look of disdain and continued on explaining that "21 km isn't that far".

At the end of the train ride, I coaxed him into a photo. He refused to take one of those "chick" photos where the girl on the end (usually with the longest arms) extends her elbows with the right amount of "loop" to fit everyone in. Instead, I had to be content with one taken from below, camera flat against the knees and with Ollympic Runner looking away from the camera.