Ten pounds!?

Image by PieterMusterd via Flickr

So two unrelated incidents here: Firstly we went to look at the new Liverpool One Shopping Emporium last night, and very nice it was too, had a lovely meal in a Tapas Bar all of which is side tracking us from the main event, which was to purchase an Anniversary card for my better-half’s parents. It was fairly late on a very wet autumnal night and we were the only people in the shop: A well known chain of card and tatt vendors. The card had been selected and my beloved was at the till; as I wandered off to look at the collection of crap masks which now appears to be the sum total of our Halloween festivities (feel free to look up Samhain as a grander alternative), the nice young man at the till said:
“That will be ten pounds please.”
I confess that this small sentance actually stopped me in my tracks, nay pivotted me on my heels and caused me to stumble back towards the till:
“Sorry did he say ten pounds then?”
“Yes, what of it?” was the curdled reply.
“It was just the one card wasn’t it?”
“It’s an Anniversary card for my parents”
“Yes but there’s just one card, ten pounds for one card?”
“And your point is?”
“But it’s a card: For ten pounds! You could make one for that!”
“Hardly the point.”
“It probably only cost them twenty seven pence to make.”
There was a sigh as she stuffed the receipt into her purse and this was followed by a “Get out!” and suddenly I was being bundled out of the shop, and off we bickered into the night.
The nice man at the till grinned at us professionally, the glimmer in his eyes hinting at the ratio difference between his minimum wage salary and the precentage profit in the products he was vending.

The second incident was this morning, my office phone rang at 08:30 ’somebody is keen’ I thought to myself, it turned out to be my beloved.
“You’ve locked me in, I can’t get out of the house.”
“No I haven’t.”
“You have, I can’t get out of the front door.”
“I didn’t, I clearly remember not locking the front door!”
“Then how come I can’t get out of the house?”
“I don’t know, but I remember waving to our neighbour as I left, I didn’t lock the door. I just pulled it to.”
“I’m going to be late!”
“Well, why don’t you go to the back door, through the conservatory, through the garden down the side, open the gate and see if you can unlock the door from the outside?” I thought to myself this would probably have been quicker if you hadn’t spent so much time ranting on the phone to me and just got on and resolved the situation. Of course I didn’t vocalise that. My self-preservation response system kicked in in time.
Having a cordless phone enabled her to huff and puff and sigh at me all the while she unlocked the back door, unlocked the conservatory door, stamped across the garden, stamped down the side of the house and rip the back gate open – whilst peppering the exclaimed exhalations with squeels and squeaks as the shurbbery (deliberately) dripped great drops of stored rain water on her. There followed a moment of silence.
“Did it work?” I asked tentativley.
“Of course it worked, you had locked both dead locks.”
“Oops.”
“OOPS!?”
“Well I can only apologise, I don’t recall locking it, look on the bright side at least we known it’s not a fault with the door or the locks”
“Bright side!? You will have to tell Sue (her line manager – we work for the same organisation but different departments) that I will be late, and why I will be late!”
That last part was added with particular venom I thought to myself as she terminated the phone conversation.

I did tell Sue. How we laughed. I also happened to walk passed just after my beloved had arrived and was recounting the tale of my ineptitude. To lighten the tone a little, I pipped up a comedic ‘blah, blah, blah’, making sure I was well out of striking distance.

Some time later I went back to see if she had calmed down. She was showing her friend the card we had bought last night, who was appreciately cooing and ahing at it. I pointed out that it cost ten whole pounds, which I thought a tad excessive for a card. Quickly adding, not that I resent spending ten pounds on her parents or anything, that’s not the point, but ten pounds for a card? Her friend adopted the international body language signifying ‘meh, this imbecile is pushing things to defcon 5 so am just going to adopt a non-confrontational approach, sit back and watch him get his head kicked in’.
My beloved hissed through gritted teeth, that ten pounds wasn’t much in the scheme of things…
“I know but, for a card”
“Don’t start again, this from a man who locked me in the house this morning!”

And there it was, the moment, when I knew all hope was lost, we were quite clearly having a discussion about the financial merits of a piece of card and implied emotive value and suddenly, with all the directional instincts of barracuda, suddenly we are talking about an entirely different topic.
“Hold on!” says I, “We’re not talking about that”
“It doesn’t alter the fact you locked me in the house this morning.”
“What’s that got to do with paying ten pounds for a card, we’re talking about cards”
“Are we! Are we really”
I noticed at this moment that her friend was making a tactical withdrawl, sensing that perhaps this was the wisest course of action, I also made a tactical withdrawl, my final winning riposte was a ‘blah, blah, blah!’ from the office door (with appropraite personal safey zone taken into account). Some may say I fled the scene, others might chose to call it a brisk walk.