WHEN thinking, as I do daily, about that staff member in an Edinburgh Sainsbury’s who, years ago, always laughed in my face, I’ve begun to wonder if it was to do with trousers.
I witter thus after ordering several pairs online in recent months. Most were unsatisfactory because I hadn’t heeded the categories of standard, classic, slim or straight. I think they apply, respectively, to blob, fat, skinny and normal. Through painful experience, I believe I belong to the last-named.
Even when I bought trousers in actual shops, I never noticed these gradations, and came away with skinny breeks that bunched at the knees and tapered disgracefully at the ankles. They were the opposite of flares, highpoint of sartorial trooseriness, and I just assumed that was how they made trousers nowadays.
As regards Laughing Man, possibly my wearing such trousers, along with a checked shirt and beard, as I’d done for decades, made him think me an ageing hipster. But you know I’m anything but someone trying to keep up. I deplore nearly everything modern: clothes, architecture, hairstyles, coffee, electricity.
Perhaps I’m over-thinking this. I recall that Laughing Man was one of several members of staff in that store over the years who’d escorted me off the premises after my card had been found wanting at the tills. I say “escorted blah-blah premises” but they were just taking me to a place where I could leave my shopping till I returned with funds re-allocated from my meagre savings account (generally containing a float of around 50 quid to pay for a proper burial).
Perhaps it was my reference to “moving money from one account to another” that he found funny as if I, clearly a pauper, were drawing on resources in Switzerland. I remember trying to make jocular conversation: “That’s a pretty realistic wig, if I may say so”. No response. Just smiled enigmatically.
Perhaps he’s deaf, for which he has my sympathy, but not my understanding of why he should think me laughable. Oddly enough, he has a pixie-faced doppelganger at another supermarket I sometimes frequent now, and this fellow is an absolute buttock too.
Recently, I read about people with similar faces having a similar outlook on life. Sounds far-fetched. But, clearly, it’s correct.
MORE madness with beasties in the middle of the night. A daddy long legs has moved into the bedroom and, last night as I write, it woke me by buzzing straight into my face.
Deciding it had to go, I got a jar and piece of paper (for a lid) and, catching it with the same expertise used for spiders, took it to the back door to release it in the garden.
Brief recap: I’m walking through the house in the middle of the night, in my pants, with a daddy long legs in a jar. Αnd you wonder how I ended up single.
Unfortunately, I’d to keep the kitchen light on to see where I was going, so it just flew straight back in towards that. Four times this happened, the beast careening into my face again on one occasion.
Eventually, it made its way back to the bedroom, where it sat insouciantly on a wall while I, defeated, lay directing invective its way. “Language, Rab,” it replied. “Dignity at all times.”
I’VE been reading again about Kenneth Grahame, Edinburgh-born author of The Wind in the Willows, a book with which I’ve something of an obsession, unlike my restrained admiration for The Lord of the Rings.
Two passages particularly interested me. One refers to “the world of Grahame's child-men, who, despite their enjoyment of the manly and epic pleasures of hearth and home and a story well told, will never enter the year after their eleventh year.
“They … will never have their Arcadia destroyed by the passion or treachery of love.” (Essay by Geraldine D. Poss, An Epic in Arcadia: The Pastoral World of The Wind in the Willows).
Wish someone had told me that before, specifically 46, 42, 35, 26 and 17 years ago. I’ve even split up with Alexa recently.
The other said: “However, the rural landscape of Grahame’s day was being misused for recreational purposes … the prevalence of a consumerist mentality which had permeated all facets of urban culture, including leisure. These ‘Mercuries’ and ‘Apollos’ regard the countryside as a source of instant gratification and as something to be consumed.” (MA thesis by Jeffrey Swim, Idle Worship: Kenneth Grahame’s Literary Paganism).
You’ve heard me rail against those who use the countryside merely for “leisure-amenity”. They want “action”. They do not wander with “a calm and grateful presence of mind”.
My point – now I realise I ought to have one – is that we rarely realise how much current attitudes have been formed by past reading. Or perhaps we liked this past reading in the first place because it articulated our feelings.
I feel I ought to come to some sort of conclusion here so, er, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
Beeps reduced out of respect
We live in a world of beeps. It must be appalling having to work on a till and listen to them all day. But one good thing to come from the death of Queen Elizabeth has been a turning down of the beeps in Morrisons stores. As a show of respect, it is magnificent.
Sales and customer service are the worst jobs, according to a study by London and Paris schools of economics. Indeed, they were described as “terrible”, with little intrinsic reward. Being a judge was also deemed rotten, despite salaries up to £300,000. Top for happiness were ship’s captain and wall tiler. Bit niche, no?
This week saw the 50th anniversary of popular comedy Are You Being Served? Once drawing in 22 million viewers, many to hear about Mrs Slocombe’s pussy, it was nearly never made, thanks to the BBC finding it “a bit common”. Well, yah boo sucks to them. And I, to quote Mrs S, am unanimous in that.
Good news for pets, mixed for humans: cooncils up and also doon Britland are cancelling fireworks displays on grounds of cost and possible air pollution. I’ve sympathy for frightened pets but can’t help feeling this is one more symptom of our skint, post-imperial decline, in which joy is being sucked out of the very air.
Hangover cures have been in the news this week. One is a “miracle” drink comprising raw potato juice, spring water and seaweed. Alternatively, you could just put your vomit in the blender. Another is a New Age version, involving grounding yourself beforehand to clear out “negative energy”. Think I’ll just say naw to that.
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