Ways to Shop

From time to time we hear heart-warming tales of informal arrangements whereby postmen (posties?) look out for elderly people who live alone. In rural France, however, this is now being commercialised: people pay for a service whereby elderly, lone residents in remote locations can be kept in touch with their relatives via regular contact with postal delivery operatives. This seems like a good idea, not only for dispersed families but also for postal services looking for income to supplement dwindling sales of stamps. (Set aside any sinister thoughts of ghoulish outcomes that you may harbour due to memories of The Postman Always Rings Twice.)

Last Wednesday, I waited in for our postie, not to check up on my welfare, but to deliver two packages. I had ordered a cushion to make my desk-chair more comfortable and a replacement part for the vacuum cleaner. You can never be sure whether online purchases will be delivered by a courier or by the Royal Mail, though it seems the distinction between them matters less and less. Whichever one comes, you have to wait in for them, which is doubly infuriating if your purchase turns out to be a dud, as did one of mine. The cushion, upon which I had anticipated settling comfortably, comprised a wedge-shaped pad that propelled my buttocks slowly and inexorably towards the front edge of the chair and under the desk. The vacuum cleaner part, however, fits perfectly. I have made a note, therefore, that internet (or catalogue, as it once was) shopping should be reserved for items that do not require a body-fit.

Nevertheless, internet shopping is convenient and I wish that it could be employed for my latest requirement – a new pair of spectacles necessitated by age-related macular degeneration. The prospect of wearing glasses permanently, as opposed to just for reading, looms and with it comes the realisation that I have lacked empathy for all those people for whom this has long been routine. The implications are only now becoming clear to me, among them this: wearing a medical appliance on your face changes your appearance, thereby making an impression on other people in much the same way as does your clothing. Some consideration is called for and I am lately transformed from a person who never noticed the displays in opticians’ windows to one who can no longer walk past them without careful inspection. I have discovered that finding a comfortable fit is straightforward but deciding on an appropriate style is not: there are subtle ramifications which I do not feel qualified to assess alone. I must rely on the advice of my personal style-consultant, aka my partner, and hope that her patience will last the course.

Meanwhile, I am quite content to wear my existing, utilitarian specs when needed as, for example, when I went to the exhibition Lowry & the Pre-Raphaelites. There, I mingled un-self consciously with people coping with a variety of sight-aids – taking them off to read the labels, putting them on to read the labels and so on – while also observing with newly-aroused interest those who sported permanently placed ‘eyewear’ of note.  

For the time being, I am fortunate in not needing specs for cinema screenings, even when – as in the last film I saw, Shoplifters – there are subtitles. The story concerns a ‘family’ that supplements its income by shoplifting, though the real interest lies in the personal relationships depicted (and very convincingly acted). The actual shoplifting is trivial in the context of the struggles endured by the characters: petty crime is an understandable consequence of a hard life. Nevertheless, the word ‘shoplifting’ is a euphemism – rather like ‘scrumping’. I heard a southerner tell a northerner about his childhood raids on a neighbour’s orchard. The northerner was unimpressed. “Do you know the word ‘scrump’?” asked the southerner. “Aye,” said the northerner, “but we call it theft.”