“He’s always coming in and asking for tigers"

Aug 14 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

THE new part of the old town is like everywhere else on this concrete earth, where the ways of commerce have prevailed.

Brilliantly lit boxes beckon on either side of the shuffling, air-controlled aisle and, in them, men, women and children stoop at the pay-desks, clutching their plastic cards – a passive gaggle of humans waiting to be processed.

Money, the once friendly jingle of coins or the reassuring crackle of notes, is rarely heard these days, but the humming electronic machines suck information from the dimples on the cards, which make unseen people very rich.

But on the approach road to the shopping centre, there is still mood and soul. You can see the bristle-chinned, booze-faced men cursing the daylight, as they shut the bookie’s door, tossing their betting slips on the pavement. Another winner has lost.

In the shop opposite, the kind man, whose father dealt in rags and bones, sits in his armchair surrounded by yard-brushes, mops, pails, clothes pegs and deadly fly-sprays, kettles, and piles of chamois leathers for passing window-cleaners.

Men smoke in huddles outside the pub, which used to keep a pork pie in a Perspex dome to impress strangers.

Then you have the second-hand book shop, which holds most of the world’s knowledge, as well as annuals about forgotten pop stars in flared trousers and coffee-table books featuring photographs of Princess Diana.

But I am in the pet shop buying a bag of dried fruits and vegetables for our rabbits, Milly and Molly.

Suddenly, the door is flung open and a man in an anorak, his hair blowing wildly, steps in demanding to know if they have any tigers in stock. I look around and spot rabbits, hamsters, mice and tropical fish, but there is not a tiger to be seen.

The young assistant shakes his head. “No tigers,” he says. The customer, who seems resigned to disappointments in life, leaves the shop.

“He’s always coming in and asking for tigers,” says the assistant.

“Maybe you should stock them then,” I think. But, instead, I nod acquiescently. On such occasions, we are never quite quick enough with the response.

The assistant should have said: “Ah, sir, are you not right out of luck today? If you’d been in earlier, there were tigers a-plenty.

“But there’s been such a run on them and I sold the last one five minutes ago to a lady in a green hat. However, all is not lost. We have a puma in the attic and a rhinoceros in the basement. Actually, the rhino comes with a free lead. By the way, are you on foot or in the car?”

In addition to the rabbit food, my wife had instructed me to buy underpants for our forthcoming holiday in Italy. She lives in permanent dread of people ogling me in threadbare underpants, leading them to suppose that we’re poor.

I have explained to her that I don’t usually venture out without first pulling on my overpants, but she fears my memory is starting to fail.

“I would be so ashamed if people saw you in those underpants.

“They’re corpse-grey,” she said one morning when I was hopping on the bedroom floor with my right foot poised over the appropriate aperture – always a tricky manoeuvre for one of my years and arthritic history.

Anyway, that is how I found myself in a fashionable store in the new part of the old town.

After beating my way through mothers and their screaming children, girls squawking indecipherable messages into their portable phones, distressed husbands, disorientated tramps and snogging sweethearts, I reached the underwear section – feeling like a British explorer in a pith helmet, who has just emerged from a steaming jungle in the land of head-shrinkers.

I examined the underpants with increasing anxiety. Each packet was decorated with a photograph of a young man, whose tummy was muscled with what I understand women call a “six-pack”. He was also, and I speak here in deference to our family readership, quite obviously a virile fellow.

In fact, a visitor from Mars would think that I belonged to a different species to this man on the packet. He is homo and I am sapiens.

Well, sapiens up to a point. Against my better judgment, I went ahead and bought these underpants, which accentuate my sags and would certainly excite the mirth of any Italian chamber maid who happened to stray into our hotel room uninvited.

“By Jupiter,” said my wife, who was practising Roman manners, as she packed the underpants in our main suitcase. “You wouldn’t cross the road if you saw him approaching.”

Well, I would as it happens. But there you go.

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk