I found myself standing at the counter in the general store this afternoon, wondering why the guy was looking at me a bit funny. Finally I realised it was because I was absent-mindedly turning a specimen jar over in my hands.

“Oh,” I said, glancing at the jar and then shoving it quickly into my bag. “That was for the jelly beans.”

I realised halfway home, of course, that I probably should’ve explained that ‘jelly beans’ wasn’t a euphemism for anything, and that the nurse gave Charlotte a jar of beans after her immunisations, so of course she scoffed the lollies and passed the jar on to me.  Of course now I can never return to that particular store, since it would be too odd and awkward to explain myself retrospectively, and so now to them I’ll always be “that woman who carries a wee jar around”.