Living in a small town was always a compromise for me and my family. If the missus had her way, we’d live on acreage in the arse end of nowhere and if I had my way we’d live in a city. So the compromise we arrived at was to live in a small town so I at least get the feeling of having some other people about and she gets the rural vistas that make her happy. When we lived in the UK we lived in Nailsworth, which is a fab little town in Gloucestershire. We moved to a similarly sized town here in Oz.

Anyway – people get to know you and you get to know people. You learn the names of the petrol station attendants, the lady in the chip shop, the local copper and the bloke in the bottle shop. This has advantages and disadvantages – it feels friendly on the one hand, but it also means that people often know your private business. Not that we’re running a knocking shop in our garden shed or anything. Just that if you like privacy then small towns probably aren’t for you.

Most of the shop are great, there’s a couple however that I only go to if I’ve got no other option. The chemists is one such shop. There are two things that annoy the living shit out of me in our little pharmacy. Firstly, they jump on you like half-starved jackals the second you walk through the door and ask if you want any help. “Yes, I’d like a jumbo-sized tube of KY Jelly and some extra-strong Canestan,” I always have the urge to shout. But instead, I just say no thanks. Why have your goods on shelves if you don’t want anyone to browse your fine collection of haemorrhoid creams, vaginal douches and Sunspirit Thuja wart ointments? You could save yourself a fortune by just having a counter and ticket system like Argos.

However even worse than the “Can I help you?” the moment you graze the door entry infrared beam buzzer – is the nosey trout of a pharmacist behind the counter. I suffer from gastric reflux which is when stoumach acid passes up your throat, usually when sleeping, meaning you wake up gasping for breath and gagging on your own bile. I don’t get it every night, but it’s such an upleasant experience that I take medication every night ‘in case’. I’ve been to the doctors about it and was prescribed a Ranitidine based pill which I used to get on prescription here until I found out that it was cheaper to buy over the counter.

So I get a couple of packets of Zantac off the shelf and go up to the till. The pharmacists eyes light up. “Zantac?” she says, “Yes, I say – for the control of gastric reflux.” She emerges from behind her prescribing counter.

“You have two different strengths there, 150Mg 12 hour and 300Mg 24 hour.”

“Yes,” I say, “I realise that. I take the ordinary 150Mg dose on normal nights and the 300Mg when the reflux feels particularly bad, for instance if ate late and then got drunk.” She frowns.

“You do know there are alternatives,” she says.

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen a doctor about this?”

“Yes. Both here and in the UK.”

“And they didn’t suggest alternatives.”

“They did. I prefer to just buy my Zantac over the counter.”

“You’re happy with that.”

“No. Ultimately I need to lose some of this weight,” I pinch my beer belly, “and eat a more sensible diet, but in the mean time I’m happy keeping the drugs companies and you in business.” I say. She holds her hands up as if to surrender and returns to her potions counter. I offer the sales assistant my EFTPOS card and she grins embarassedly.

The only time I’m going back in there is if I contract Ebola and know I’m still contagious.

Mind you, the chemists in nearby Broughton isn’t much better. In there they don’t jump on you the second you walk through the door and they don’t give you an Abu Grahid style interogation everytime you buy a packet of Nurofen. No, what they do is gossip. The wife of the chemist is on the P&C at my son’s school and she’s the biggest loose-lipped gossip-monger in New South Wales. Take, for instance, the following incident.

Friend of ours (we’ll call her Sara) was recently seperated from her husband who’d shacked up with their Filipino nanny. Sara had been romantically connected with another friend of ours (himself recently seperated) who I’ll call Martin. There probably had been a drunken snog at some point, but there had been no jiggy-jiggy and they certainly weren’t an item (apart from anything else, Sara was returning to her native New Zealand). Anyway, Sara’s married sister comes over from NZ to visit and, having missed her period, asks Sara to pick up a pregnancy test kit from the chemist. Sara obliges. About a week later, Sara bumps into the chemist’s wife and she says, “So have you cancelled your planned return to New Zealand then?” Sara looks at here with a confused look on her face. “No, why would I do that?” She says. “On account of your being pregnant,” she says.

Sara puts the chemists’s wife straight, but over the next few weeks loads of other mums at school come up and ask her if she plans to settle down with Martin! All thanks to some pharmacist’s wife who put two and two together and got 69. Of course once Sara explained the situation it was the nosey cow who ended up looking stupid, but I doubt she’s learnt. I’ve since heard from loads of people that they choose to go to nearby Nowra to get their presciptions for precisely the reasons I’ve mentioned above.