Houmous Girl stood forlorn in the midst of Tesco. Justitia, the Roman Goddess of justice, was traditionally depicted as holding a set of scales and a sword, emblemising the qualities of justice and honesty. Houmous Girl was holding a battered packet of ownbrand Weetabix, emblemising the quality of being completely fucking broke.
Perhaps she should sacrifice a virgin goat to the eldritch gods of student fi nance. Otherwise it looked as though she would be spending the rest of term subsisting on a diet of strained baked bean juice, toenail clippings and whatever booze she could suck out of the rug in her downstairs toilet.
At the start of term, that ASOS Marketplace crop-top knitted by hand out of the nipple hairs of Romanian nuns had seemed so very essential. At the bar in Bridge, those three shots of sickeningly purple syrup had seemed like a sensible micro-economic investment in an attractive capital asset. At Hassan’s afterwards, that tray of assorted rat trimmings had seemed like proof of a benevolent creator.
And now, it was all gone. Obnoxiously Opinionated Guy maintained that money was a bourgeoisie affectation and a cancer on society: since he tended to make these observations in between sips of his tax-free Starbucks or from behind the Macbook mummy had bought him for his half-birthday, Houmous Girl had never taken him that seriously. At this point, staring down the barrel of Lidl, his opinions seemed a lot less obnoxious.
She came to her senses to see Rower Lad lumbering towards her past the tubs of discounted taramasalata. His motives for venturing into the whole foods section of the supermarket were unlikely to be dietary: this was a man who counted Lambrini as one of his five a day.
“Fancy bumping into you here,” he grunted unconvincingly. A gaze of smouldering passion is often metaphorically described as ‘undressing someone with your eyes’: Rower Lad was metaphorically right-swiping Houmous Girl with every lecherous glance. In vain she looked around for an exit. Shelves of falafel to her left, shelves of falafel to her right. Would there be any escape from the Valley Of The Shadow of Parkend?
