The Road to Damascus
Old people – and I am one – who needs them, huh?
Before the pedants among you get out your New Testaments and quote the story about the desirability of taking the beam out of your own eye before taking the mote of someone else’s [at first I wasn’t going to look the reference up, but then I thought it might add credibility to today’s post if I did, so it’s Matthew 7:5 since you were thinking of asking!] can I please just register the following observation about life.
It doesn’t matter what age you happen to be, there is little more calculated to cause irritation and frustration than getting stuck in a queue behind old … or thick, or absent-minded, or ‘away with the fairies’, especially if they’re old … human beings.
And, yes, before we go any further, I did have a bad morning of it yesterday!
My first obligation was to go shopping at my local Sainsburys supermarket.
Shopping is not one of my pleasures – to someone like me it is a waste of time you could be spending doing something else – but in the scheme of things my relationship with my local Sainsburys is relatively satisfactory.
I know broadly where all the different sections are and I’ve been well-trained (it’s amazing how over time even the most unpromising male slave can become quite proficient when nagged often and loudly enough his female handler) not to buy food products – or quantities thereof – other than those itemised in his shopping list as issued by The Boss.
If you’ve not been sent straight to the personal service meat, cheese, cooked meats or fish counters … and you are looking for fish or meat, their aisle is over on the left towards the back of the store, beside the clothes and hardware area.
Cheese, milk, yoghurt are either side of the shushi counter at the back.
If you want tins of chopped tomatoes or tubes of tomato concentrate [but never the one with balsamic and herbs in it] then they’re on the first left after the dairy aisle.
If you looking for eggs [they’re along the back of the store towards the bakery] or those new-fangled veggie-crisps that The Boss likes [they’re in the next aisle on the right after eggs], then I’m your man.
I’m not allowed to buy doughnuts or Danish pastries [because they’re bad for me and also I always have to hand the till receipt in so that She can check I haven’t bought any on the quiet], but they’re on the left against the back of the store next after the crisps aisle if I ever was …
And so on.
My point is, however, that I’m a quick ‘in and out’ sort of a guy when it comes to shopping – mind you, when it comes to it, probably everything else I can think of as well.
I can zip round my local Sainsburys in less than half an hour and be back on the road home within 40 minutes. That is, unless I’ve asked George, the friendly chap from Kenya who is part of the team washing cars in the car park, to give my vehicle a quick go-over whilst I’m inside, in which case it can take up to a full hour whilst I have to stand around waiting for the conscientious George to finish doing his final ‘wipe and wash’ job.
Anmyway, back to yesterday.
I only had about ten items to buy and – when I got to the check-out area and began trying to spot which till-queue had the least number of numpties in it, I was directed by the store assistant supervising these things to the last but one queue, where I was going to be second in line … but behind a large, square-shaped lady I should estimate about the age of 80.
The moment I’d ‘committed’ to my place behind her by beginning to unload my shopping onto the conveyor belt I realised I’d been ‘done’.
Everything my shopper-in-front did was being executed at a snail’s pace. The only positive aspect of the situation was that she wasn’t a talker. If you get stuck behind a snail who talks you can rapidly lose the will to live.
I shan’t bore you. All I could do is mentally ‘switch off’ and take my punishment.
Episodes like this are the only occasions these days upon which I come close to recovering my long-lapsed belief in God. I start from the viewpoint that the situation cannot have been visited upon me completely randomly and from there it is but a short leap to the conclusion that Somebody or Something must have it in for me because of something I’ve done previously to annoy them.
Back in the centre of town I had nothing else to do upon my expedition other than to visit my bank in order to deposit a personal cheque.
Being over the age of sixty I refuse to deposit things through a machine in the wall.
I still cling to my nostalgic memories of the halcyon days of banking when your local manager knew your name and took a personal interest, which is why I insist upon queueing to see the staff behind the tills [or, to be more accurate in the case of my local bank these days, standing with their backs to the wall behind a desk at one of two computer terminals] because at least you can deal with a human being instead of some newly-installed Big Brother device.
In order to be dealt with I joined the inevitable queue at the place indicated. There were just two ladies in front of me – and to be frank I didn’t take much notice of them.
Both the computer terminals featured customers already being attended to.
On the face of it, therefore, I had maybe a couple of minutes before one or other customer would move off … then maybe five minutes whilst the two ladies in front of me ‘did their thing’ … and then it would be my turn (when I deposit a cheque it takes me precisely two minutes and that includes my chat with either the middle-aged lady staffer on the left [bit of tennis elbow troubling her, son in the Navy] or the dapper little balding Iberian Peninsular-type looking, suspected gay, thirty-something male staffer [fond of gardening, shops in Waitrose] on the right).
But not on this day, perhaps inevitably after my Sainsbury’s shop.
[What had I done to irritate God this much? It must have been something really bad].
Firstly, unfortunately, neither customer being attended to was a five-minuter.
The sixty-ish bald chap on the left was plainly a businessman ‘cashing up and/or depositing’ [that’s a separate problem anyway, they should be given a till – or preferably a town – of their own, because they always hold up personal customers like me who just want to check their balances or cash £200 or something].
The seventh-decade lady customer on the right was small and mousey, wearing a blue floral dress. I’d hazard a guess that in the late 1960s she might have been in the second wave of ladies who took advantage of the Pill, burned her bra and took part in the sexual revolution of the time, all the while being a bit hippy-dippy.
She’s still a bit hippy-dippy, but now also exhibiting additional ‘away with the fairies’ traits no doubt caused by the ravages of time upon the brain box and probably keeps two cats and mostly wanders around the streets carrying two ancient shopping bags full of personal items whilst talking to herself.
I kid you not, these two between them remained being attended to for all of ten minutes(!), by which time [as I’m sure you’d understand] not only was I fit to burst, but no fewer than seven – yes, seven – other members of the public had joined the queue behind me.
Taken together, especially in the 90 degree heat, afterwards it made me feel a strong urge to drive back to Sainsburys and buy myself both a doughnut and one of those little plastic boxes containing two slim Danish parties with icing and a cherry on top …
