I am nearly finished shopping at my local supermarket when I spot a tall, familiar-looking man striding about in the vegetable aisle, pausing to glance at an aubergine.
“That’s Charles Dance!” I think. “The actor famous for playing royals, assertive bureaucrats and villains in such hits as Game Of Thrones!”
I don’t word it quite like that in my head, but you get the gist.
“What’s he buying?” I wonder.
Well, he’s not buying that aubergine, for a start. He hasn’t got a trolley, just a basket, so it appears this is a targeted shop. He will not be tempted by impulse aubergines. Charles Dance knows why he’s here, and he intends to nail it.
I’ve seen lots of celebrities in shops. I saw Jason Donovan in a Tesco Metro in Manchester. He was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a hat that claimed he’d been to Mount Kilimanjaro. I felt sad for him. But then he bought champagne, which made his Mount Kilimanjaro boast more feasible, so I was happy again. I saw Barbara Windsor open a Somerfield in Loughborough in the late Eighties. And I also used to live on the same road as Su Pollard from Hi-de-Hi!, and would often see her in the newsagents on a Sunday, saying mad things and laughing.
But Charles Dance is a whole other level.
“Well, it’s lovely to know Charles Dance is doing a shop,” I think, as a couple of other people spot him and turn, “but I must leave him be. His purchases are none of my beeswax! A Hollywood icon such as Charles Dance must be allowed a few moments’ precious privacy.”
But I’m still looking at him as I think that, and he spots me looking at him, and I immediately stare at my trolley and start pushing it away.
“Now he knows I’ve spotted him,” I think, embarrassed. “He’s going to think I’m a Charles Dance obsessive. Or he’ll be paranoid I’m going to ring Heat magazine and say I’ve spotted Charles Dance near an aubergine, if people still scrape gratification from doing that.”
I resolve to attend to my own business, and dart down another aisle, but this is all just beans and tinned corn and stuff, so I turn my trolley around and head back.
As I do, I get in Charles Dance’s way; the opposite of what I want.
“Sorry,” I mumble, but Charles Dance, elegant as a gazelle and as statesmanlike as some kind of statesman, merely sidesteps me neatly and silently with cold eyes.
“He could’ve said ‘sorry’ too,” I think, as he sidles away. “Well, I hope he likes beans and tinned corn, because that’s all he’s going to find down here, the chump.”
I walk in the opposite direction and turn into a new aisle.
Halfway down, I see Charles Dance coming straight towards me again. Go away, Charles Dance! He’s moving with determination. More people stare at him. I resolve not to look in his direction again.
But he’s carrying something. I have to look. It’s a lemon tart. Charles Dance buys lemon tarts. That’s interesting.
Then I look away, all casual, but I know he’s seen me clock his lemon tart. Why did I look?! I need to be careful, I decide, as he passes. He’s seen me see him, then seen me see him twice after that. If he sees me see him again, he’s going to assume I’m engineering all this seeing him somehow. He’ll think I want to not just see him, but talk to him.
If I turn into the next aisle, chances are Charles Dance will be there – how many times have we all said that? – so I leave two or three aisles, and then hit a right.
Charles Dance is there.
I back away before he sees me, and go back one aisle. Charles Dance will never find me here.
Within a minute, I’m stood next to Charles Dance as he selects a baguette, penned in by two other shoppers. Dance picks a white one – I’m forced to go granary, so I seem capable of independent thought. I can’t help but notice he’s now carrying a packet of king prawns.
“What a weird shopping list,” I think. “A lemon tart, a baguette and some king prawns. Maybe his wife’s chucked him out.”
But then I realise I am being like those stories you read in the Daily Mail; noticing dull things nobody needs to notice, and speculating on what they mean on a wider level in the comments at the bottom. This must happen to Charles Dance and his type all the time. He probably reckons I’m a Mail journalist who thinks he’s stumbled on the story of his career. Hey, king prawns… didn’t Charles Dance play a king in Game Of Thrones? That would be useful when composing the headline.
I get away from Charles Dance, but he’s on my tail headed for the tills. At the end of the aisle, like the Red Arrows, we peel off in different directions. I do not look at him again, except once, just to make sure it was actually Charles Dance.
Dance has three items. He’s out of there fast. A consummate pro.
In the car park, as I trundle my trolley outside, a car brakes hard to let me cross.
It’s Charles Dance.
I make a silly face and give him two thumbs up. He does the same.
Now hopefully we can both just get on with our lives.
