You are in:
Arkwright - The Independent Voice
There comes a time when enough is enough and I reached that point very suddenly earlier this month. Passing another birthday milestone, then hearing of a good friend finding himself with a serious health problem, flagged up once again that life is short and I needed to live a bit. An escape for a week of wine, good food and sun was needed.
With holiday plans starting to take shape in my mind I was able to draw on the calmness that I imagined would engulf me once I was packing my bags, naturally having first made suitable arrangements for others to mind the shop in my absence. But then the best laid plans of mice and men often get pushed off course and that's what unexpectedly happened to mine. I could have coped with any one of the following in isolation but they followed on so closely one from the other that I was pushed over the precipice.
First annoyance was a group of Far Eastern tourists who, mauling through the sale rail, kept demanding "What best price? You do discount? You make good price?" Perhaps their guidebooks hadn't explained that English shops are not run on the same lines as street bazaars or, if the books did, they had chosen not to take any notice. "That's the price. Take it, leave it or clear off" hovered on my lips but went unsaid; instead I appeared grateful when they spent a fiver! Next up was Miss Jobsworth to spot-check my Health & Safety arrangements. I'm inclined to agree it was wrong to send small children up chimneys (I haven't done that for ages) but hasn't it all gone too far these days? She snooped around with a clipboard sighing at any petty misdemeanour she felt I should have drawn to my attention and needed to address, in other words being about as useful as a traffic warden. Once she'd filled enough of her tick boxes she was gone. And then... in he came: TAMI man, not alone but with TAMI wife and TAMI children. My ultimate bete noire! A whole TAMI family who "just wanted to have a nose" and then proceeded to give a running commentary on their thoughts on the shop and stock; none of them capable of completing a sentence without including the words Tesco, Argos, Matalan, Internet. That was what really did it, without warning to myself or those around me I barked, "I'm sick of hearing about the TAMI world but if that's what impresses you off you go, you'll have to drive 15 miles to find any one of the first three and I don't know why you bother to go out your front door if the Internet is so ****** marvellous. Leave my shop this minute, go on, out, go, no more nosing for you - TAMI off!" I locked the door behind them, emptied the till, stuck a scribbled notice on the door and headed home. Within two hours I had the family (admittedly all were somewhat dazed) in the car and we were heading for a ferry to France, any thought of my responsibility to provide a service to the community (and an income for myself) completely erased from my brain. The impulsive defiance felt great as I sipped my first cold glass of Chardonnay that evening!
After a week of croissant, coffee and three-hour lunches I told the family I thought it was time we went home. They were extremely disappointed because they'd begun to think I'd taken on a rather jolly form of mental ill health and preferred me that way to the "sane" person they saw on a day-to-day basis back in Blighty. Reluctantly we headed for the French coast where we found our ferry being circled by part of the French fishing fleet. We all agreed that the craft being unable to dock was an omen and perhaps we weren't meant to return. Sadly my irrationally calm behaviour of the last week seemed to be fading. I stamped around the port shouting, "I never wanted to be part of the EU but as we are I demand the right to move freely between member states, where's Sarkozy when you need him? Too busy telling the Irish what they should think, do and vote instead of sorting out his own fishermen!" With that La Sécurité arrived, avec le grand chien and threatened me with deportation, clearly overlooking the fact that the French equivalent of Captain Birdseye wasn't going to be letting anyone go anywhere. The holiday was well and truly over and being abused back in the sports shop began to look appealing!
