Oh for the days when…

 I was standing in the check out queue in Sainsbury’s, watching a man take an age to pack his shopping, while the cashier sat watching him, and we all waited patiently, and I thought about Len. 

Len was a middle aged man who worked in the Co-op supermarket in Bakewell, 20 years ago, in the days when I often did a weekly shop there. That was before ALDI arrived a mile away and before the Co-op changed in response from being a useful shop for locals into a shop aimed at people holidaying in the area.

Len was the cashier whose checkout all the locals chose. He was cheerful, friendly, smiling and super efficient. In those days cashiers offered to help you pack, and Len was an expert and intelligent packer. When Len died, a bench was bought for him with a commemorative plaque that says

And there’s another bench with a plaque outside the shop, too, that says the same,

Two benches!

We valued him.

Oh for the days when it was a pleasure to do the shopping. Oh for the days when there were people stacking the shelves in Sainsbury’s so you could ask them for help when you couldn’t find something. (Yesterday I had to ask a customer where the coffee was.) Oh for the days when they manned all the checkouts. At least in ALDI there are people on the tills, even if it is an unseemly race to put the items in the bags in your trolley before they fall off the end of the till.

Bring back all the Lens. Make public life human again. Make conversations with strangers an everyday occurrence. Let me have more conversations with women knitting on station platforms, reminiscing about how we hated our knitted bathing costumes when we were children, because when you came out of the sea, they sagged down to your knees.

Oh that frabjous day, calloo callay, when my mother told Jen and me that she’d bought us elasticated cotton ones. 

Like this: