Our Shopping Week - Enter a Shark

We are having an orgy of weight guessing. It all began as a special Shopping Week in which the village shops co~operated. The drapers, of course, found it easy to fill their windows with “startling" and “amazing" bargains, to offer us fashion parades and dressmaking demonstrations, but those whose job is the more serious one of food providing were hard put to devise anything really striking. And then the greengrocer had an idea. From some sour¢o unknown he procured a giant pumpkin, a very colossus, which he enthroned outside his shop. A ticket invited us to guess its weight, the prize to be taken in kind. 

Any diversion is welcome to the housewife, and we gathered round to compare notes. Mrs. Perking, whose family is numerous, was applied to as an authority, but confessed herself no good at guessing by the look of things. If she could just feel now, she could judge by her Georgie, who was only weighed last week. Strangely enough, the greengrocer did not seem to encourage trial lifting, and began to draw our attention to his sprouts, so we hastily dIspersed. 

Not to be outdone, the butcher prepared a surprise for us next day. As we entered to order our chops or sirloin behold, a grinning head confronting us =- a genuine boar's head, tusks and all, dressed and garnished. It was certainly a surprise, and Miss Miggins, hand to heart, confided that it gave her “quite a turn", But when we saw the label affixed to the head and realised that we had only to guess its weight to get our Sunday joint free, we quickly recovered and passed round the pencil. 

The business that Mr, Brisket did that morning was suprising and it must have been in a supreme effort to draw us from meat to fish that the fishmonger devised his rival attraction. It was an immediate triumph. Outside his shop, flanked by cowed~looking herrings and frightened plaice hung a real shark, an evil look in his eye and his teeth bared. "Guess \ my weight" commanded a plagard, and in a moment a crowd had collected. 

As I prodded him gingerly in an effort to discover if he were solid all through, a voice murmured in my ear: “A nice bit of cod,today, madam?" It seemed ungracious to refuse, and I gave an order, slightly consoled as I heard my neighbour being lured into the purchase of herrings, which she abominates. After all, there is always the cat, and the man who introduces a real shark into a dull village deserves some appreciation.