Thursday 21 October 2010

Checkout

I was in a queue at the supermarket earlier today. Hardly a long queue, though a little busier than usual. When I got to the checkout, the lady who served me said, I'm sorry about your wait, to which I immediately replied, with faux indignation, but I've lost a stone!

She laughed, and I remarked that I was glad that she did - bless her, she said it had really cheered her up.

In an alternative, imaginary scenario which immediately started playing out in my mind, I said to her, well, you've got to enjoy the laughs and good cheer when you can get it, haven't you, because after yesterday's euphemistically-titled spending review, we're all well and truly fucked, aren't we?.

I may have then either trudged out of the shop with an aura of tragedy, or continued on to musing intently to my surely-now-less-than-appreciative audience about misery, alienation and death, depending which scenario seemed more entertaining in my mind's eye.

Probably the latter, because it would have annoyed the shoppers being held up further in the queue behind me. In the event though, I (thankfully) kept all this within the confines of my skull, and left her still in a moment of levity.

8 comments:

Reading the Signs said...

Trousers, I can't believe how long it took for the penny to finally drop (wait? wait? what does he mean about losing a stone?). Oh weight! It's a good thing you didn't have me sitting there in checkout, you might have thought I was just being a miserable git.

trousers said...

Signs, I actually enjoy the looks of blank incomprehension when the penny doesn't drop in such circumstances - and it's a good job as well, since I often seem to come out with things which I find funny but others find incomprehensible.

Anyway, as you can see, my internal narrative was rather less than cheery, but I really did appreciate the banter.

Zhoen said...

The combination of wait/weight, and stone/15 pounds had me baffled for a while as well.

Feeling a bit down, are you? Just stay lucky, it's the only plan in place for anyone.

Alexandra MacVean said...

I'm not sure how to interpret this post, but maybe it's a combo of it being so late here, fighting tears from someone being a jerk to me...I dont know. Sounds like you are struggling a bit yourself. Forgive me if I am way off base. Ugh. Just wanted you to know, I care.

trousers said...

Forgive me, Zhoen, I didn't think about the translation between metric/imperial.

This is less a personal sense of feeling down, in an immediate way - it's more a sense of sheer despair and rage about the current political/economic situation in the UK, and deep concern about where it's going to leave many of us.

Sophia, see my paragraph just above, for where I'm at with this post. I'm so sorry you're feeling the way that you are, and especially appreciate that you care. Hang in there and, whatever that jerk has done, you deserve to be treated better than that.

Fire Byrd said...

Not sure that people in the middle won't suffer either.Just gotta keep our heads down out of the way of the radar police

trousers said...

Oh, it's only people right up top who are spared any real chance of suffering by default I think, FB.

Zhoen said...

As long as it's only "the normal background-noise type of guilt that comes from just being alive this far into the twentieth century", then.

As long as it's not ‘this specific terrible thing is specifically and terribly my fault.’”