Not All Those Who Wander Are Aimless
an excerpt

It’s one in the afternoon. I still have an hour and forty five minutes before my plane leaves. Heaps of time to do my favourite thing – smelling all the perfume! The first one I reach is in a boring bottle – it has a ruby red lid, with a gold band. You may ask why it is I go for this bottle, and I may tell you the answer. It’s because it is red door. And then you may ask why it is I choose to smell red door first. And the answer is – because it’s my mother’s favourite perfume. I spray it onto one of those long skinny cards and shake it like a Polaroid picture.
Lucy lu’s and baby dolls. Get on the floor. Shake it like a Polaroid picture! You know what to do oo oo!
Hey ya!... hey ya!
I’m dancing and humming and I don’t realise it. But the shop assistant does. “Can I help you?” she says bemusedly. Her eyebrows are raised into her hairline.
They’re shaped so nicely too. I wish I could do that to mine, but she probably got hers done professionally, where as I do them with my own wax, knife and ripped up old sheet. They look okay and a lot tidier than if I just let them run wild, so why would I pay mega bucks for somebody else to inflict pain on my face, when I can do it myself?
“No thanks, I’m good. I think it’s ready for a sniff test now.” I smell the little cardboard strip. It smells like mum only without the smell of her. Just the smell of her perfume really. “The dancing helped I think.” I grin at the helper person and move on. Little bottles that are shaped like naked people! That MUST smell good! Sarah uses that brand, not that I remember the name. or exactly which flavour. But that’s okay, I just find another bunch of the little cardboard strips and spray some perfume from each of the bottles. I do another shake but this time more like a fan than a Polaroid picture, and this also prevents me from going off into my own little world where I look like an idiot to everyone else in the vicinity.
Or is it the real world in which I look like an idiot, and my own world where I look normal? This sounds more correct but not nearly as appealing.