[ WP ] Describe some mundane activity as if you 're a character in a noir story .

I took one deep breath and waited. It would have been unusual for Tommy to return at this hour of the morning, but I still leaned slightly in anticipation in the direction of the front door – despite the rattle of rain against the windows, I reckon I could still hear its noisy click and creak from here. When I accepted that it wasn ’ t coming, I exhaled and scowled at my reflection in the bedroom mirror. My lipstick was already smudged at the edges. Tommy ’ s little village was no catwalk, but stubborn vanity meant I still had to fight the urge to wipe it all away and smear it on again. He would tell me not to. Had he been here to protest, I would have done it anyway just to defend the principle, but I was already late. The old witches on this street can say what they like about me behind their dreary curtains, but I ’ ll make damned sure they never call me unpunctual. 
 
 The wide grey sky always seems so close to the earth here. On this particular day, my usual prayer for sunshine was met by a gust of wind, which eagerly swept the knotted red scarf from my hair. A few brown strands were already straggling free at the front. With no patience for futile fiddling, I removed the scarf, and let the rest of the hair go. Across the street, that hunched old lady from Bevis Drive raised a trembling hand at me and waved. I smiled. By her own admission, she ’ s never gone more than fifty miles from this tiny Welsh outpost since the day she was born, and the culture is wrapped around her like a shroud. I didn ’ t stop to hear the latest exploits of the Llanddona Knitting Club, though something told me I would hear them eventually; local news is always amplified here, and small talk has never seemed so small. 
 
 I didn ’ t stop until I ’ d reached the entrance of the shop, its smudged doors sliding open and welcoming me into the only heated building this side of the horizon. I followed the usual routine – grab a basket, check the basket, stealthily discard it if its previous carrier spilled something sticky on the handle ( which always seems to be the case ), stumble into the warmth like one of Tommy ’ s dozy sheep. I thought I saw another woman shuffling out of the shop in front of me, and I almost moved to clear the old bag ’ s path; when I realised my mistake, I straightened my back and tried to stride with powerful purpose as I had once done on city streets, struggling to ignore my heels clicking on supermarket tiles and the fact that I had just flinched at my own reflection. 
 
 One egg box or two? One – Tommy ’ s infernal chickens ought to provide enough eggs for the whole village, but given their usual impotence, I expect six at most. One bottle of milk, tea bags, washing up liquid, fertiliser. Tommy would argue about the fertiliser, but I don ’ t know how he expects anything to grow unaided in that weedy old garden in the two minutes of sunshine this place gets each year. It ’ s not like I ’ m going to poison the planet by growing a patch of hydrangeas. As I picked up the neon green bottle, I briefly considered Llanddona crackling and curling in a poisonous mist, all its suffocating remoteness reduced to smoking ash… Into the basket the bottle went, and down the aisle I trotted, headed straight for the nearest checkout. Not long now before I could be finished here and out, out into the wide world again. That vaguely reminded me of some poster I ’ d had as a child, with brash text scrawled over a world map that told me to seek out adventure. I laughed a little to myself– my grand search for adventure had led me into the city, and into marriage, and into Llanddona. It didn ’ t take long for the laughter to fade. 
 
 I paid and swung the flimsy plastic bag around my ankles as I walked out, scanning the sky for any hint of a change in the weather. As usual, the clouds stared bleakly back at me. If there ’ s a man up there, I remember thinking, it seems like he ’ s not taking requests today. He never does. I looked over at one of the few cars in the village – rusty, no doubt, from its sheer uselessness in a place of such isolation – and wondered if it was up to us to just take, and stop asking. It seems an awful lot easier to drive into the sun than to pray for the rain to stop, doesn ’ t it? 
 
 Wednesday is shopping day, and you ’ ll see me there again this Wednesday, with my little basket and my lipstick in as bright a shade as is possible in such dull weather without looking gaudy. I ’ ll be there, somewhere underneath that big grey sky and the endless green. Maybe.
