last minute

 over Christmas there will be need of a metal bottle of carbon dioxide to make the tap water fizzy. The water from the taps is supposed to be some of the best in Europe, so it seems silly to buy water in bottles. But to make it fizz it is necessary to inject a squirt of carbon dioxide. And the metal bottle is empty. Now, before Christmas.

Leave the house, walk masked down the street. It is quiet, there are few people about, there are only a very few shops open, those with essential services. Just like the drug store, were things like soap and perfume and so forth are sold. The toy department has to be closed, the music department too.

The bottle sold by the drug store is in the camera bag

Go downstairs, that is where the household stuff is.

Search.

Search more, polishes, mops toiletpaper.

Teapots.

A person dressed in the uniform of  the house, ask.

The woman points, says "over there" in German, and then interrupts herself to say that they seem to have been all sold.

Return home.

Put the empty bottle from the drugstore into the shelf. Take out the similar empty bottle from the supermarket. Take the longer route down to the supermarket, downstairs, underneath the deserted shopping mall. A covidular silence everywhere. 

Neologisms rule !

There are the bottles of  See oh two. Pick up a bar of chocolate and a baguette and a small salami too, check out and return the empty metal carbon dioxide gas flask. Get a credit and wish the woman working at the checkout a happy Christmas.

On the way back, remember that there is no shaving foam at home. The scratchy pain shaving yesterday overrides the dislike of the drugstore. Return, there is a different woman counting the customers now, putting a coloured plastic cube from left to right as each customer enters and from right to left as each customer leaves. When there are no more cubes on the left, no customers may enter.

Until somebody leaves.

Go to the back of the store, hair care. Then painkillers, then dental care. Pedicure.

Ask.

Shaving cream is at the front of the store. Ask again.

A blonde woman shows the way to the shelf.  Reach down, take the cheapest

Then, one set of shelves farther over, a bottle of perfume.

For the wife. It is Christmas, after all