Couponwoman

Somebody recently accused me of making all this up but I challenge anyone to spend one hour in my local library and not find a complete psychopath intent on library mayhem. Anyway let me move swiftly on to Couponwoman. I first spotted her several months ago (24 May) when she lumbered over to my desk and sat next to me. At first she appeared quite normal, working through a simple Sudoku. Normality ended ten minutes later when she started drawing out the grid for a Sudoku on scrap paper, from another newspaper then started to complete it. I was intrigued as I gawped through clenched fingers. A blue striped canvas bag sat by her side, which I assumed contained her washing but I was completely fooled. The bag contained a multitude of magazines and newspapers and other crossword cuttings and Sudoku puzzles. I was perplexed. Many of these puzzles seemed to date back decades. There must have been thousands of puzzles in that bag and it must have weighed a bloody ton!

Occasionally she would produce a pair of scissors and start cutting out crossword puzzles then pasting them into a scrapbook, messily, childlike, and completely bizarre but Couponwoman was manically content so who am I do judge. Oh, and why Couponwoman? Well periodically she would cut out coupons, anything really, 2 for 1 offers on toothpaste to special offers on frozen sausages to free night accommodation offers in the Loire Valley with all the usual catches, but somehow I couldn’t see Couponwoman in the Loire Valley. She would then stack the coupons into neat piles then rubber band then together. Couponwoman also comes complete with a nasal deformity, meaning she needs to clear her throat and nose every other minute. My only regret is that Couponwoman hasn’t met Josef yet, but there is still time.