Some time ago I mentioned my Local Shop.

I mused about how the bloke behind the counter was giving me mysterious presents for no apparent reason. 

Try as I might, I still can't stop him, and he is continuing this strange ritual to this day [or more accurately tomorrow, as I drop in there for the Sunday paper].

I said that in the past he had regularly given me bars of chocolate [grand!] sacks of carrots, mushrooms and potatoes [not so grand as they went bad before I could work my way through half of ’em], a hand lamp [very handy] and a Thermos mug [Herself robbed that].

Since I wrote that little brain-fart the flow has become somewhat surreal. 

One day he gave me a load of breast cancer stickers for the car.  I'm still trying to find a use for them.

Another day he gave me a load of those sunshade things you stick in a car window to keep the sun off your infants.  I gave them to the daughter.  The kids should like them as they are printed with cartoon characters.

One that had me completely baffled was the time he dumped two bags on my newspaper.  One contained 100 plastic forks and the other was 100 plastic knives.  I gave them to the daughter as well so she can hold kids' parties along with all the bunting that I received on the previous week.

Then he started getting personal.

He slapped a large [and I mean large] bottle of shampoo [for greasy hair] on the counter and then shot around to the shelves and came back with an equally large bottle [for coloured hair]. 

OK, I grant that my hair was long.  I had it tied back in a pony-tail and I was having difficulty seeing past the fringe but it wasn't that bad.

The following week he kept to the same theme and I got two large hair styling combs.  I decided that things were going too far and that it would have to stop.  He promised that the next week I would be gift free and that I would walk out with only the items I had bought.

The following week arrived and I got a load of reflective armbands.

I gave out to him again and pointed out his promise.  "All right," says he.  "Nothing next week."

Well, next week will arrive tomorrow.  It remains to be seen whether I will be bless with another armful of stuff and if it will have any connection with my previous gifts.  A hair dryer?  Curlers? 

And I still haven't discovered why he does it.