Today as I was coming home I stopped in 'Save the Children' to pick up something for the Secret Santa swap my floor is having tomorrow night. You might think it very strange that we're having this swap since Christmas is a month away, but Cambridge celebrates something called Bridgemas, which is an early Christmas so students can get festive before we break up for the holidays at the start of December, since no one is in Cambridge at Christmas time.
I picked out what I needed for the Secret Santa swap, and also picked out a sweet necklace and a set of table spoon and tea spoon measures, before heading up to the counter to pay. There were two old women behind the counter, who had been having a conversation about staying home to 'take care of the children' and how 'it's not like that these days'. It reminded me of how Grandma is always asking Auntie Sarah 'what about the children?', ' the children need someone there'. It's interesting to think about the different attitudes to children in different countries and across different times, or even how the definition of what a child is changes - in medieval times the concept of a child as we understand it today was completely absent: children were basically mini-adults and that comes across in their art.
I put my items on the counter,and one of the ladies put the charge into the cash machine, while the other went to check the price on the necklace, since the price tag had fallen off. I talk to the cash-machine lady about school, and told her how I'd been enjoying my first term. She told me she was once a lecturer at Sidgwick site, teaching economics. The other lady came back with the price tag, and I asked if I could pay with my card, since I hadn't brought any money with me.
'Ah, you don't have any money?' The second lady asked, looking worried, 'You see, we've had problems with that before.' (Pointing to the little card machine, and eyeing it as if it were an armadillo rather than a perfectly normal piece of technology)
'I'm so sorry I didn't bring anything else.'
One of them looked under the cash desk and came up with a laminated list of instructions on how to work the card machine.
'Put in value...' they murmured, and turned to the machine. All my things together cost 6 pounds, and so the second lady hesitantly pressed the 6 on the machine interface (while the other asked her 'Don't you need your glasses?'), and '0.06' appeared on the screen.
'Oh dear, what have you done now?' The first lady asked.
'That's six pence,' said the second lady, bemused, ' I'll just press clear.'
That's when I asked if I could possibly help, since I'd operated a card machine when I was working in On The Table. I explained to them that I'd been a waitress and had to figure out that confusing piece of technology too. Then I showed them how to enter 6 pounds into the machine (6-0-0), and then how a customer should put in their card and enter their pin, and then how to check that the transaction was approved. I had to go over it a couple more times, and I assured them that I'd been just as confused over how to work it as a waitress, and had caused a long queue during lunch hour, and we all laughed.
'You'll have to come back and man the shop!' They said as I bid them goodbye.
I had a whole sweet potato, and courgette, and beetroot, as well as some hummous on rye for lunch (I couldn't finish all the courgette - it was just too much!) and then munched on the last of my chocolate granola (new recipe and it tastes like coco pops!) while watching harry potter...
Now I have to get back to Virginia Woolf and madness and modernism, but dinner is going to be curry spiced cauliflower with brown miso rice and cucumber, and tomorrow I go to London, and I am very happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment