Grog and Grogoch

 Susan had been visiting her parents in England and I wanted her to feel like a Queen when she returned. So I cleaned the house: dusting, vacuuming, tidying. Making neat. I washed the kitchen floor. I disturbed a great many spiders. She would be eating in the airport as her flight was delayed, but I thought I'd go and get a bottle of fizz to celebrate her return. 

For denizens of the Manosphere, I imagine this must seem like the actions of a simp or cuck or a beta or whatever you think defines a low power male. Soy boy, is it? I've taken my eye off the manosphere lately. Initially fascinating in it's warped value systems, naked exploitation, and endless illiterate trolling, I just can't be bothered now. You should have grown out of this callow chest-beating routine. It's pathetic. Buying a bottle of wine to share and celebrate with someone you love is a beautiful thing. I know Andrew Tate doesn't drink, but he still smokes baguette sized stogies rolled on the thighs of trafficked virgins. Okay. Maybe that's your toxic equivalent. Figures. 

None of this has anything to do with this story. Ignore it. Ignore all that, like you would manosphericals, who often bleat like monosphericals. 

I went into the Winemark. The usual guy was behind the counter. Not the usual usual guy, but the new usual guy. I knew him well enough to say hello. So I said hello. The structure of the shop is this: two counters, side by side. To the left of me a wall of chiller cabinets, in front of me, on the far wall, the room temperature reds, behind the counter spirits and probably cigarettes and scratchcards, though those things aren't really a part of my life. In the centre of the floor are multipack and on-offer beer deals, stacked on top of each other and, weirdly, and this is important, a single column in the middle of the floor. As I entered the shop, emitting my squeaked hello, the second counter was obscured by this column. It was as I headed to the chiller cabinet to pick up an inexpensive bottle of Saint -Hilaire I spotted him. There was a bearded man sat on the counter. He had long brown hair and was wearing a greenish boiler suit with brown boots. He just sat there: beaky nose, intense dark eyes, feet dangling. I gave another, less uncertain hello and the bloke behind the counter replied again. This guy said nothing. 

Possibly a species of urban Grogoch

Who the fuck was he? My first thought was perhaps he was a company quality inspector checking out the server's way with the customers. But he didn't look like a company quality inspector. He looked like a man who'd been dug out of a peat bog, none too carefully. I thought then he must be the server's mate just hanging out, but, and here's the really odd thing, the server gave no indication at all he even knew he was there. They didn't talk. There was no interaction between them at all. 

I went to buy a supplementary red wine, which meant I had to pass this strange perching piskie. He didn't move. The server greeted me with a warm smile. I attempted to indicate the man on the other counter with a complex and muscular shuffling of the eyebrows, and the sort of eye rolling that would guarantee the gathering of very little moss, but it had no effect on this blithe, smiling man, scanning my purchases and pinging my card. He gave no indication that there was anyone else in the room. As I left, I looked back and the server had sat down behind the till. The bearded man continued to sit there and stare. I got out of that shop sharpish. 

I've done what I always do. I've put jokes and silliness in this description. I've added a pointless sally at the Manosphere. It's because I can't really explain the strangeness of what took place. I spoke before about seeing that weird girl, cruciform outside an abandoned house, her hair all over her face, and how she shouldn't have been there. She was all wrong. This felt the same. This had the same vibration. A jangling, electric energy. He didn't do anything. He just sat there. He didn't even stare. He did, but not directly at me, not really, but everything in the shop ignored him but me. He was a blot on the space. Everything bent round him. He shouldn't have been there. I got out of that shop as quickly as possible, fearful that he might appear, walking beside me. 

I've been in Ireland too long. I can see the bloody Aos Si. The Gentry. The Young Moundlings. 

They are nothing like The Lord of the Rings. This was like a stretched Darby O'Gill monster. 

There's a famous tale of the Fay Folk  I reference in my story The Wink and the Gun. A girl rubs one of her eyes with a special ointment and when she goes to the market she sees all manner of strange people she's never seen before. One of them notices this and speaks out, "How is it that you see me?" "I see you with this eye." she says, indicating the eye. "Well, you'll see me no more." says the creature and rips the eye out of her head. 

Which is great. So I've got that going for me.