Carrier bag wielding shambler, part one

April 15, 2010

The carrier bag wielding shambler is a certain kind of person. Usually male, he is often found at games conventions, shops or tournaments. He can be middle-aged and overweight or young, weedy and geeky. He will always be carrying a particularly rustley sort of carrier bag, half-filled with random items.

Mattgreen met the original carrier bag wielding shambler and coined the phrase back when we used to play Magic: The Gathering. Since then he has encountered many more and the term is regularly used in our house to refer to such types. Incidentally, Mattgreen has a curious hatred of rustling carrier bags and refuses to use them.

The other day I was coming home from the gym at ten o'clock at night when I spotted a carrier bag wielding shambler up ahead. He saw me, then stopped. He appeared to be waiting for me to pass him, just before the entrance to the underpass. I hesitated, then decided to take a detour to be on the safe side, so I walked up to the main road instead of going past him and into the underpass.

I stood by the main road, trying to think of an alternative route that wasn't loads longer, but couldn't come up with one. I wondered how long I should wait before going through the underpass? Then suddenly a young guy listening to an ipod came past me and headed down the slope towards the underpass.

I thought, 'Great, I can just follow him and he'll protect me from the shambler!' and set off after him. Unfortunately he was walking really quickly and I was having trouble keeping up. The path was quite twisty and I didn't want to be left behind, so I started to hurry slightly. The bloke started walking faster, so I started going even faster too until I was almost jogging after him. It occurred to me that he might think that I was the nutter, hanging around on main roads and then chasing people through underpasses. Luckily the shambler was nowhere to be seen and I got home in one piece. Phew! High drama eh?

More on carrier bag wielding shamblers soon - I bet you can't wait!

Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

web counter