L - Once more into town

My early trips into the city were taken with Si?n and Lianne. Lianne
very quickly came to be replaced by Manley, whose shopping needs were
more in tune with my own. That's not to say I gave up on Lianne
completely - one particularly memorable trip involved me overindulging
in Morrisons, which is far bigger and further away than the Tesco
Metro. News of its deals and range spread round Waveney like one of our
very resilient colds, so that when Lianne, who as yet had not entered
this wondrous place, announced she was going on a pilgrimage there, I
volunteered to accompany her. Since this was my first visit too, I
failed completely in my judgement of what quantity of foodstuffs I
could carry, and soon discovered myself clutching three fat carrier
bags with each arm. Now, there is a bus stop right outside Morrisons,
but we strangers were not to know that, and Lianne took the lead in
marching back along the long road towards another bus stop. Her pace
was brisk and steady, while mine was hopelessly erratic. One and a half
minutes down the road and I felt my fingers had been nearly severed
through by the thin, twisted handles, so I stopped, laid my burden on
the pavement and kneaded them with my thumbs. Looking up, I found that
rampant ambler Lianne had not stopped and was getting uncomfortably far
ahead of me - I took up my bags again and raced after her, this time
going right past her so that there would be ground to make up when I
rested my arms again. This happened after only a very short time, and I
was not feeling at all fit by the time Lianne caught up with me.

"Come on, Jon. Don't lag behind," she said as she sailed past.

So again I hoisted my load and scurried after her, overtaking her and
putting considerable distance between us. Inevitably, after that gush
of energy I was forced to stop again, whereupon she seemed to be upon
me almost immediately. Was she rapidly increasing her pace without
appearing to do so?

"Wait!" I called feebly.

She did me the mercy of looking behind and offering an encouraging
nod, but did not stop. I gathered up my last reserves of mighty
manpower and chased after her once more.

The pattern continued all the way up to the bus stop, but my ordeal
didn't end there. Heavens, no! When the bus finally arrived it took me
an embarrassingly length of time to ferry my shopping through the
doors, after which I had to release every bag of it in order to carry
out a hurried search for my ticket. Then I had to gather it up again,
and somehow fit myself and all six of my fat providers onto and around
a single seat. My inability to do this was so evident to the pensioners
at the front of the bus that I was very kindly offered a priority seat,
and earned a sympathetic word. I smiled and tried without success to
appear virile and able.

Anyway, that was a deviation. What I intended to say was that with the
departure of Si?n, Manley and I were left to shop as only a twosome. A
twosome, that is, until the day our corridor samurai, Joe Hell,
declared in his cheery way that he would accompany us. We welcomed this
with mutterances of jubilation, and between us establish that our route
that day would have many ports of call. Manley, having mysteriously and
accidentally broken his cafetiere, needed a new one, and Joe needed a
replacement bulb for his new lamp. Both items required us visiting John
Lewis. After that, we would trip along to HMV and scout for music, then
follow up with lunch at Baguette Express, a provider of edible
loveliness that Cole had introduced me to the previous week. We would
finish with a good shop at the Tesco Metro, where I promised myself I
would take note of Joe Hell's purchasing habits.

Needless to say, all did not go as we imagined it would.

Getting to John Lewis was no problem (nor, indeed, was getting out of
it.) Finding the desired items by ourselves, however, proved to be
taxing, and we thus acquired the help of an assistant. I feel this is a
fair use of such people, and if it isn't then it should be made clear
on the way in, which it wasn't. She led us to a treasure trove of
cafetieres in no time, and Manley's eyes blazed with the agony of
decision. I offered to go halves on a good-sized one with him, since I
often have a cup of Manley's freshly cafetiered coffee, be it Jamaican,
Brazilian or French (the French coffee is worth buying just for the
packet's unconvincing portrayal of a Frenchman equipped with beret,
baguette, moustache and moroseness.)

While he was entertaining my offer, Joe Hell was taken away to some
very exclusive nook of the store where the bulbs were kept. Manley was
scrutinising his cafetiere of choice and pouting in satisfaction when
the saucepan samurai returned - Joe was now a man possessed, the spirit
of battle playing about his face.

"What a really nice lady!" he sang, cradling a small white box. "She
gave me a replacement bulb for free. How nice is that?"

"That's pretty nice," I agreed.

"I must go and tell her superiors. They sometimes get rewards for
customer compliments, you know. I should go and find someone to tell.
What a nice lady!"

He marched determinedly towards the counter where the staff gathered,
Manley and I trailing behind, but then hesitated upon his approach,
sidestepping behind a settee. Every leader needs good instincts, and
Joe's are far from needy.

"No," he firmly said. "They're all too close together. We'd better try
a different floor. Did you catch her name?"

"Mildew?" I suggested.

"Is it?"

"Or Ethanol, maybe? Eureka?" I went on, as Joe prowled around the
outskirts of the furniture to get a closer look. "Heathenry? Illumina?
Joseph?"

"It's Alison," Joe said, turning round and making for the
stairs.

"I almost had it."

So we tried a different floor, where we soon found a very important
looking person who Joe confronted directly.

"Excuse me, a lady downstairs was really nice to me and I wanted to
tell someone."

"Oh!" said the very important looking person. "You'll probably have to
talk to someone on the floor she works on?"

She dispensed yet more advice, but I had switched off, as I had
spotted the food court lurking to our immediate left. When Joe had
finished his conversation, I suggested we split up.

"Meet us back here when you're done," I told him, and he readily
agreed before galloping off to recommend Alison to her boss.

While he was gone Manley and I chose ourselves some beverages and
crisps, and I tried to pay for mine at the information desk, which I
soon discovered was a mistake. What an error it would be for me to
pride myself on my common sense - but then, I have always preferred
uncommon sense, of which I have plenty. Forgive this endless deviation
of mine.

Manley showed me where the tills had been hidden - behind rows of
shelves against a back wall - and after a fair wait in the queue, we
made the goods ours. We were then rejoined by Joe, who had met success
in his mission.

"They said the employee of the season award was coming up and they'd
take it into account," he chimed, and we all agreed that a little light
had been brought to these dark ages.

Arriving at HMV also proved mysteriously easy, so much so that I should
have suspected something would go amiss very shortly afterward. I chose
myself a Leonard Cohen album, while Manley scoffed at the prices.

"Ten ninety-nine," he said. "Nothing's less than ten
ninety-nine!"

"Ten ninety-nine's a good price for a CD," I told him.

"He's right, Seb," Joe agreed. "CD's must average around fifteen pounds
nowadays, mustn't they? Ten ninety-nine's no bargain, but I'd say it's
fair."

Manley was characteristically defiant.

"Well I've never bought a CD for more than ten pounds."

I was riddled with astoundment.

"But that's absurd! A CD collection as wide ranging as yours - where do
you get them all from?"

"Second-hand shops or small dealers, sometimes the Internet. It's never
worth paying ten ninety-nine."

This secret safely divulged, we cleaned up at HMV and went off to find
lunch.

Which proved to be impossible, as Baguette Express had vanished. I led
Manley and Joe Hell up past the market stalls and the spire of the
church, toward the side streets, past Next - which had a sale on - and
all the way back to the corner of St. Benedict's street in search of
the outlet. There was no sign of it, though I was certain that it had
been there, near the wornsmooth, steep steps leading up to the church,
on that very corner where they met the stone street with its bollards.
I became exasperated.

"It must only appear on certain days, like Brigadoon."

"Jon, you really are hopeless," Joe said, warmly. "How can you misplace
a shop so easily?"

"I haven't misplaced it!" I protested. "It has misplaced itself."

Manley suggested we give up and move onto shopping at Tesco, since it
was very nearby, then have lunch back at Waveney. Resigned to the
unending impossibility of my situation, I agreed, and the three of us
entered our final stopping point. The Daily Mail was on display to our
right as we came in, and the samurai and I both noticed its headline:
"9,000 reasons why asylum seekers should be kept out," or some such.
Joe took verbal exception to this blunderous and provocative
monstrosity.

"Look at that," he said, the wizened sensei shamed by his arrogant and
foolish pupils. "Look - at - that. That is absolutely disgusting. They
shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, telling people utter bullshit
like this."

"I suppose they're only playing to an audience all too willing to
believe it," I replied, trying to react calmly and reasonably whilst
secretly envisaging an indescribably terrible revenge upon the Daily
Mail writers.

"Perhaps. But don't you think they should have a duty to challenge
stupidity rather than going along with it? I just find it utterly
reprehensible."

"Well. It is," I concluded, and dived for the bananas.

Manley had steamed ahead of us with the trolley that he and I were
supposed to be sharing, so I set off at a pace after him, gathering
peppers, pears and iceberg lettuce along the way. When we had arrived
opposite the jars of sauce and seasoning and were nearing the milk, I
turned back to see that Joe had been assailed by a short, elderly man.
The man appeared to be jabbing at the air with a stick of celery and
laying down some rules, while Joe, seemingly pinned by the vegetable,
was listening carefully. Worrying that it might be an agent of the Mail
denouncing us as ungrateful hooligans, I charged back down the aisle,
still clutching my pears and pulled up alongside the pair. I was
immediately acknowledged as the other troublemaker, although I could
see that the man was trying very hard to put across his case gently and
carefully, so as not to drive us to protest, or mug him.

"You see," he explained, turning to me, "you're students. And I don't
mind money being taken away from me to pay for your University
education, because you're British, but a lot of these people aren't,
and I don't think that the money I earn should be paying for them. Do
you see where I'm coming from?"

He laid a hand reassuringly on my forearm. I avoided asking him how it
was that he was paying for my University education, in case that was
indeed the case, in which case I wouldn't want to pursue the matter and
risk him finding out that he shouldn't be doing any such thing.
Instead, I waved a pear in his face and asked, "But why does it matter
that we're British? People are people, right?"

"Yes," he replied, "but listen. If you keep reaching into the bucket
and handing out money, eventually?you're going to reach the
bottom."

He accompanied this explanation with a slow, deliberate arm movement,
mimicking the handing out of money from a bucket. At the conclusion, he
smiled and raised his eyebrows, as if he had seen the map of
realisation steadily unfolding across our faces.

"Anyway, I don't want to impose my ideas upon you. I just wanted to
tell you how I see it."

With that, he ambled away to continue his shop, leaving Joe and I
struggling with said map. It's far easier dealing with your political
enemies when they're contemptuous witterers who deplore your very
existence, rather than polite and gentle-natured old
conversationalists. I found myself, not for the first time, uneasy with
my own plans for selective liquidation of the human race, and was
forced into pessimism until Joe offered up the perfect solution.

"If a man like that was given a fair presentation of the facts," he
told me, "then he would undoubtedly form some helpful opinions."

I silently vowed to see all traces of the Daily Mail obliterated.