Listening to: Checking out the Checkout Girl by Wazmo Nariz; Supermarket by Nuclear Rabbit and Eat Some Vegetables by Brian Shell.
It’s funny how this lock-down impacts people differently and there are people who for all sorts of reasons are really struggling. I certainly recognise that I am lucky, and I can honestly say that I in no way miss being limited in my options for shopping or going to the supermarket. A ceilidh on your own is fine if you are good company. I suppose if anything it would eating out…
As a child, one of the folk we visited was old Mrs Mack in Kinlochleven. She wasn’t as mobile as she used to be and the kitchen was really tiny. There was a cooker on one side and a basin on the other and the table was out the door into the next room. Mrs Mack would sit on her stool between the basin and the cooker, and when food was ready, she passed it out on a stick. This shepherd’s cromag approach has proven to be a valuable lesson in social distancing.
This approach would also have been handy when on holiday we visited the delightful Cafe Des Amies, a quaint old fashioned cafe bar in an old part of the town of ………. The cafe was a welcoming brown colour. A large window proclaimed the name of the cafe, with big brown curtains ensuring that you couldn’t see in. It had that 1940 retro chic, worn out linoleum and nicotine brown walls and ceiling. I suspect there had been no changes since about, well, about 1940. Three customers sat individually at tables, and we sat at another table trying to see if the menu was actually a menu or part of the 1940 decor. The daily special certainly seemed to be from before the end of rationing.
At that point, Methuselah’s mother came out on her zimmer frame with a tray on it carrying a pot of fondue. “Now this is going to be interesting” thought I. She parked the zimmer and leaning on the wall edged her way round to one of the tables and put the fondue set down. She edged her way back and 15 minutes later appeared with some bread and prceeded to work her way around the wall again. I couldn’t bring myself to order food as the poor old trout was struggling so badly, so we just ordered a couple of drinks.
This was obviously the final straw, as Gagool the Crone sat herself down and proceeded to burp and fart till she deflated across the table.
We were not sure of the cost of the drinks or whether the man at the bar was really meant to be helping himself to drinks, when a younger woman appeared with an apron. We asked for the bill, and she cheerily replied “I go now! I go la la la” picked up up her jacket, or someone’s jacket, and walked out. Eventually we put some money on the bar, washed our own glasses and left. To this day though, I have never settled whether she was going to choir practice, or whether this was some secret underground code.
Atomic Crofter 