I visited Guildford again, it was unpleasantly cold there, in a wintry way not an unwelcoming one.
The Shops are more fun today, I thought, as a I chanced upon a gentleman with a stand filled with booklets next to him. The printed cardboard sign above his stand bore the legend "What You Should Know About Mental Disorders" and a logo, the initials of the Jehovah's Witnesses dot org.
I was not rude, I was not loud, I don't think I drew a crowd as I questioned him on the appropriateness of using the emotive and very serious subject of mental health as a hook to attract attention to his worship club flyers. He was stumped but started to move the booklets that mentioned the subject on their covers to the top of the stand, nearest to the sign, and the ones that did not he moved down.
We spoke for some minutes. I was cheerfully nimble-minded and more learned than he expected. Eventually, when standing still in the cold had become tiresome for me, he could come up with no answer at all when asked the straight question, "What benefit is it to me or anyone else to be a member of your club?" and he was equally at a loss when then asked, "What ill will befall me or misfortune will I suffer if I don't join?".
With no apparent upside to membership and no downside to non-membership he appeared momentarily baffled as to why he was a member of the club himself, though I should commend him for conceding positively that the JWs are not an appropriate organisation to advise on any aspect of mental health.
I left the idiot pondering my assertion that every time he and those like him said to do something benign or worthwhile just because a particular book said so he and those like him were giving authority to anyone else's instruction to other people to do harmful things just because the same particular book said do them, too.
I tried on some shoes but they were too small and no larger the same were in stock at that or any other branch or their warehouse. I ate a sausage sandwich perhaps eight feet to the side from an ex-colleague from two jobs ago to whom I would have had nothing to say beyond acknowledging that we had been colleagues so said nothing.
I despise in passing the individual or committee that decided to put HP Sauce in small sachets which are impossible to open without getting some sauce on your fingers and those who dare distribute as napkins the flimsiest of paper sheets that adhere, tear and leave themselves attached to drying sauce instead of wiping one's digits clean. More wandering about ensued. I needed a cigarette.
I warmed up by queuing in Costa, before sitting outside in the cold to consume hot milk with coffee in it, to smoke and to watch the herds of pedestrians I had numbered amongst only moments earlier. As a seated observer of the hustle and bustle I was undistracted from reflection on the remarkable dexterity of the young barista whose work had had me mesmerised while awaiting my beverage.
I wondered whether there were any other jobs left in the modern world where the demonstrated attention to detailed and complex manual procedures performed at high speed had not been mechanised, whether such skills were transferable to a higher earnings bracket, as I am sure they were not being adequately rewarded where they were.
There is a lady who carries out similar tasks rather more slowly in the Liphook Sainsbury's Cafe, where I sometimes pause on shorter walks from home, who wields a J-cloth in the most disturbing fashion when attending to a steam-pipe dripping with just foamed milk. I do hope it is not just for my benefit.
I am having to remember I don't and won't have a bakery to stop at on the way to work now or a lunch-break to remind me to go to a café. My default daily calorie intake is down as a result by a sausage roll, a doughnut, some crisps and a bacon roll. It may have been a diet devoid of goodness but it was a diet of sorts.
Tomorrow I shall have a far healthier festive feast with my sister and her family and doubtless will feel uncomfortably full and suffer the wind of the sparsely-toothed for some while afterwards. I suppose that is what crimbo is all about.
