Banding together

RUBBER.


I imagine you just had an involuntary mental image of a gimp mask. Or a ball gag. Or a woman in thigh-high boots contemplatively stroking a cat o'nine tails while straddling your prone body. That is because you are a pervert. You couldn't just think of something innocuous like a tyre or a cheerily-waving Michelin man? Go and wash out your mindbrain, sicko.


Ahem.


Anyway. Lucy has a new fixation with rubber.


Unfortunately for me, the rubber she has chosen to fixate on is of the bog-standard band variety. Specifically the red rubber bands that suddenly seem to be littering our streets. In a way I blame myself for this current obsession, as it was me that pointed out the phenomenon in the first place. Picture the scene - Late and Lucy, somewhat hungover from the Bottle Shop's monthly wine-tasting/riotous piss-up, are wobbling up to the Swan for a quiet Sunday hair-of-the-dog.


Me:  (pointing) Jeez, that's the fifth red rubber band I've seen in the last hundred yards.


Lucy:  What?


Me:  Those rubber bands. They're everywhere. It's as if we're being carpet-bombed by the stationery supplies department of Viking Direct.


Lucy:  Poor thing, it looks so forsaken lying there. (She stoops to pick it up) Maybe I'll start a home for abandoned rubber bands.


And she was as good as her word. Now we can't walk more than a few yards without her spotting a rubber band. You'll be mid-conversation with her and she'll suddenly dive towards a likely specimen that is lying in the gutter, on the pavement, even in the middle of the road. It is most disconcerting (especially for any oncoming traffic). However, as with all of Lucy's eccentricities, the best way of dealing with them is just to go with the flow and join in. Thus, today I was on my way back to the Bottle Shop with some coffees from Giannone's when I spotted a lonely elastic band nestled between an empty can of Export and a crisp packet. I scooped it up, and later presented it to my ladyfriend as a token of my love. She looked at it critically, then tossed it in the bin.


I was somewhat taken aback by this.


Me:  Whatever happened to your Home for Abandoned Bands?


Lucy:  That's only for red rubber bands. That (here she gestured binwards) was tan.


Me:  You're discriminating against it on the basis of colour? Isn't that rather racialist?


Lucy:  It's important that they're red. They also have to be virgin.


Me:  Virgin?


Lucy:  Yes. Clean, unbroken, unattached to anything. I don't want to just randomly collect any old rubber band - that's the sort of thing a crazy person would do.


And she laughed a little condescending laugh. "Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha." Just like that. I'm lucky I didn't bite off my own tongue.


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: Les Douze 2003 (France). Spicy and full-bodied. And RED. Because any other colour would be just crazy. £6.49
28.9.05 15:57