YESTERDAY I did it again. I convinced myself that going through the self check-out aisle in Sainsbury's in Barnstaple would be quicker than queuing behind a granny who wanted to pay her £25 bill in coins of the realm and the woman in dungarees with enough lentils and soya bean curd piled into her trolley to feed a field of people at Peterborough Green Festival.
Will I never learn.
For those of you who have given this facility a wide berth, let me explain. It sounds quick and easy. You take your packet of turkey twizzlers, 3lbs of lard and giant pack of oven chips and scan them through yourself. Insert your own bank card and, hey presto, you're done.
Not so.
I was told to place my bags in the bagging area. I placed them. A disembodied voice comes from the screen "unexpected item in the bagging area". A loud voice. I felt like a shoplifter, except anyone could see that I had nothing at all in the bagging area except a few miserable looking carrier bags. I think it was trying to humiliate me because my "bag for life" (which incidentally, is what the Dearly Beloved sometimes calls me) was from Tesco.
An assistant comes and presses a few buttons and I'm away.
All goes swimmingly until I have the temerity to move a bag in the bagging area so I can reach another. Off it goes again: unexpected item in the bagging area. Back comes the assistant who presses those buttons and all is well. This happens three more times. By the third visit, the assistant's smile is beginning to fade and she starts to look sideways at me. Do I have a packet of frozen peas secreted about my person?
I'm scared. Will I have to submit to an intimate body search from a 25 stone security guard with dirty fingernails? But she gives me the benefit of the doubt and I'm doing my impression of a checkout girl once more.
Now, occasionally you have to have an item verified. I've always assumed this is to check you are over 18 if you are buying alcohol, for example, or to stop a 14-year-old with a glazed expression on his spotty face from buying a pump action shotgun.
However... I had the temerity to buy a packet of teaspoons. Yes. Teaspoons. And I'm told to get the item verified.
The assistant who formerly had been giving me the once over, was now smiling.
"Goodness," she said. "I don't know what they think you're going to do with teaspoons. Maybe make a shank!" Both of us look like respectable (-ish) women, well past the first flush of youth and have no business knowing anything about shanks (knives made in prison out of any bit of metal an inmate can lay his hands on, as I'm sure the less respectable of you will know).
While she's 'verifying' my teaspoons/shanks we have a little chat about America's Toughest Prisons on Sky. TV can be soooo educational!
So I finish my shopping at last, complete with the raw material for a shank or two. I wouldn't mind, but the teaspoons weren't even for me. They were my for my mother who is in her 90s. I don't think she'll be filing them down and sharpening them up. Not with her arthritis.
Will I never learn.
For those of you who have given this facility a wide berth, let me explain. It sounds quick and easy. You take your packet of turkey twizzlers, 3lbs of lard and giant pack of oven chips and scan them through yourself. Insert your own bank card and, hey presto, you're done.
Not so.
I was told to place my bags in the bagging area. I placed them. A disembodied voice comes from the screen "unexpected item in the bagging area". A loud voice. I felt like a shoplifter, except anyone could see that I had nothing at all in the bagging area except a few miserable looking carrier bags. I think it was trying to humiliate me because my "bag for life" (which incidentally, is what the Dearly Beloved sometimes calls me) was from Tesco.
An assistant comes and presses a few buttons and I'm away.
All goes swimmingly until I have the temerity to move a bag in the bagging area so I can reach another. Off it goes again: unexpected item in the bagging area. Back comes the assistant who presses those buttons and all is well. This happens three more times. By the third visit, the assistant's smile is beginning to fade and she starts to look sideways at me. Do I have a packet of frozen peas secreted about my person?
I'm scared. Will I have to submit to an intimate body search from a 25 stone security guard with dirty fingernails? But she gives me the benefit of the doubt and I'm doing my impression of a checkout girl once more.
Now, occasionally you have to have an item verified. I've always assumed this is to check you are over 18 if you are buying alcohol, for example, or to stop a 14-year-old with a glazed expression on his spotty face from buying a pump action shotgun.
However... I had the temerity to buy a packet of teaspoons. Yes. Teaspoons. And I'm told to get the item verified.
The assistant who formerly had been giving me the once over, was now smiling.
"Goodness," she said. "I don't know what they think you're going to do with teaspoons. Maybe make a shank!" Both of us look like respectable (-ish) women, well past the first flush of youth and have no business knowing anything about shanks (knives made in prison out of any bit of metal an inmate can lay his hands on, as I'm sure the less respectable of you will know).
While she's 'verifying' my teaspoons/shanks we have a little chat about America's Toughest Prisons on Sky. TV can be soooo educational!
So I finish my shopping at last, complete with the raw material for a shank or two. I wouldn't mind, but the teaspoons weren't even for me. They were my for my mother who is in her 90s. I don't think she'll be filing them down and sharpening them up. Not with her arthritis.
