Public Inconvenience / September 21 2007
There was a huge queue of elderly investors outside the branch of the Northern Rock bank on the market place this morning. It stretched all the way along the High Street to the Co-op on the corner.
The bank has been in the news recently because it has more or less gone bust. Even though the Bank of England has given a guarantee to Northern Rock’s customers that their money is safe, they are still determined to withdraw every last penny from their accounts as any confidence they previously had in the company has now completely vanished.
For some unknown reason, the long queue was made up mostly of badly-dressed old people. The pavement was a neat and tidy sea of beige and lilac. They knew that were doomed to be there all day and some had come prepared with deckchairs, cucumber sandwiches and flasks of milky tea. I felt particularly sorry for one little old lady at the back who was there to actually make a deposit of £5 into her account. She was going to have a long wait.
What puzzled me was, how, if they were going to be there all day, they were all going to be able to empty their weak bladders on a regular basis. There is no public toilet in the village. To my horror, I did notice that one or two of them had clearly visible damp patches beginning to appear on their nylon slacks. The weather is very clement today and I am sure that some ripe and musky odours will begin to emanate from that area of the parish by teatime.
The English are so agreeable and polite when forced to queue like this. If such a line formed in some other, rather less refined country such as Cuba, for instance, I am sure that there would be assorted items of street furniture being regularly tossed through shop windows accompanied by sporadic outbreaks of acute violence. That is not to say I consider my compatriots to be pathetic and docile; we just seem to be so orderly and sophisticated when the situation demands it.
Allowing myself a last, cursory glance at the charming congregation in front of us, I mentioned to Audrey that I was tempted to go home, put on my big, woolly leg-warmers, and return to prance up and down the line, singing and dancing with limbs outstretched – like Bruno, or one of the other Kids from Fame – to keep the old biddies in the queue entertained and to demonstrate to them my sympathy and support. She gave me one of her looks and I decided against it.
On the Fantastic hi-fi today:
Lady Soul - Aretha Franklin
Filed under Englishness / Life / Thoughts
Comments
2 comments on “Public Inconvenience”
Jo Beaufoix / September 21st, 2007 at 1:08 pm
We’d pay to see that Napoleon.
Napoleon Fantastic / September 21st, 2007 at 2:02 pm
£10?
Thank you.
I’m here till Thursday.
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