John Vir owns a newsagent in Southampton — the only shop that still stocks packets of petrified celery soup, drosophila-studded fruit and boxes of henna. Lucy and Paul are his favourite customers — they live across the road above Snooke's Electrical Stores, soon to become the Bluebird Café. Stencilling blue doves below the picture rails and buying stripped-pine chairs from the Oxfam furniture store Lucy works in the newly opened café whilst Paul spends his time at the Badger Centre as a volunteer. Meanwhile John Vir thinks of little else but Lucy and invites her to the cash 'n' carry, hoping of course, that it will be a prelude to something more exciting, for them both …
