Let's Go For A Little Walk...

 I'm always in danger of blaming Belfast on the vicissitudes of modern life. Everything shoddy and shit happens to me here, but maybe that's because I live here, and perhaps everything has become appalling everywhere. So, apologies Belfast if your standards of customer care are no worse than anywhere else but, what has become clear, is that in the past ten years, since online delivery services have carved the guts out of the in-store shopping experience, everything has properly gone to shit. 

This is the shopping list: I'm going to the Post-Office to mail off a copy of Spine. I also intend to buy a lemon, a bottle of wine and a steak. Because I'm worth it. This will mean I have to visit three shops: the Post-Office, which is in a larger shop called Supervalue, but I can't get the wine there as Supervalue isn't licensed because, in Northern Ireland, practically nowhere is. I will get the wine and the lemon from the Co Op but, although they sell steaks, I will go to the butcher for that because, as I've previously mentioned, I'm worth it. 

It's midday and it's very hot. This year in Northern Ireland it has either been raining or exhaustingly, dog-in-a-car-killing hot. Occasionally both. Hot rain, like a warning shot from Ming the Merciless. The first problem I encounter has nothing to do with the shops, though. It's this: 

There is a tradition in Belfast, possibly, as I said, elsewhere as well, of people parking on the pavement. Cars, certainly, white vans, of course, and now enormous flat bed trucks. I'm lucky, I only had to step into oncoming traffic on a busy arterial road to get round this fucking thing, but I'm not an old lady walking a dog, or someone with a disability scooter. They're fucked. I'm only slightly differently abled. I can still dance between the cars. I'm not sure what the law is here, but I'm pretty sure in London, say, you'd be clamped, towed, or crushed into a box the size of a beer cooler if you pulled this shit even once. Here it's every day.  

First stop: The Post-Office. And it's shut. No reason is given, but they apologise for the inconvenience. I go to buy a lemon, but they have no lemons. 

Second stop: The Co-Op. There's never anyone behind the counter at the Co-Op. That's their business model. Despite their adverts presenting themselves as a community hub, that we all own, as well as constantly trying to sell me a funeral, in reality my local Co Op is a Deliveroo warehouse where delivery drivers take precedence over paying customers who have actually shown up, and what staff there is spend their time on an unending trolley dash for lazy pricks who can't be arsed to do their own shopping. It's the only shop in the area that sells wine, but I can't buy the wine because there is no one to verify that I've been legally able to buy alcohol for 37 years. The self service till, charmingly, films you while you're shopping, but is not sophisticated enough to verify my age, so I pantomime looking around for a staff member for a few moments for some passive aggressive fun, before going off to find someone who can actually sell me the fucking wine. Eventually I find a boy in the warehouse and he agrees to let me have the booze. I try to buy a lemon, but they have no lemons. 

Third stop: I go to the butchers in Fayre. Fayre is a fancy grocers with lots of fruit and veg and frou frou nonsense cheese and biscuits for parties. The butcher is its own private kingdom within the shop. And it is unmanned. Also unwomanned. No one is there. There is no bell. I cough. I say, "Hello?" I'm aware of my accent. I've been aware of my accent throughout all these transactions. I'm aware of it when I go and ask the bloke behind the till in the main shop whether the butcher is open today. I say "mate" a lot. He goes to the butcher's booth, lets himself in, asks me which steak I want, I point at one, he weighs it, bags it, stickers and knots it, then we both walk back to the main counter where he is able to sell it to me. I also buy a lemon. 

Is it wrong and old and ludicrous of me to still remember when you could go into a shop, pick up the thing you wanted, take it to the counter and someone would sell it to you? I'm not talking about haggling in a souk. I'm not trying to bring back the barter system. But going to a shop and not being able to buy anything because there's no one there to sell it seems to me to be a puzzle with a piece missing. 

Is it just Belfast? Is everywhere like this? It didn't used to be. 

It's not all bad news. On the way home I see this graffiti. 

Nice to see some love for Buddy, late, lamented second singer in Showaddywaddy. The flame still burns.