No one even calls you St Michael any more.
A fresh blow, for me, is the latest self-checkout apparatus, where you must hurl your coins down a chute, just as though you were tossing pound coins into a pint glass in the kind of grubby public house I have never been in.
This coin orifice, it should be noted, lights up and flashes, as does the notes slot on the opposite side, like the embellished extremities of a brassiere at the Moulin Rouge.
I imagine.
In the interests of raising awareness of this grim spectacle, I have attempted to photograph it:
I have had to improvise with Photoshop to demonstrate the full effect, as the lights don't flash in synchronisation.
The Marks & Spencer of legend would have been slightly embarrassed about asking for your money, automatedly (yes, I'm totally sure this is definitely a word). The Marks & Spencer that would sooner have closed its doors for ever than allow a box of Kellogg's or a can of Coke into the stockroom would merely encourage the sober placing of cash in a brown envelope (provided) and the opening and closing of a hatch. Or better, the recorded voice of Stephen Fry (Nigel Havers if Fry's busy making a documentary about words somewhere warm and exotic) apologising profusely whenever an unexpected item finds its way into the bagging area. 'Oh, I know this is a terrible bind, but would you be a brick and pop that little soldier through the scanner again. Everything shipshape now? Oh, good show!'
Not this clattering of coins from a great height. Not this vulgar neon beckoning.
4 comments:
The day they allowed kids clothes to be branded with TV cartoon tat was the day they died.
Ali x
Love it. I want the Stephen Fry admonishment/encouragement recording to become standard in M&S - I'd go there every day if it was.
"Would you mind awfully telling us how many plastic bags you might need, old bean? I know it's terribly bourgeois but one must think of the planet these days, mustn't one!"
I remember walking through the 'Per Una' area on a shopping trip with my mother more than ten years ago, and to my disgust found 'pop music' blaring out over the speaker system.
I remarked at the time "Marks & Spencer shouldn't play pop music, Marks & Spencer shouldn't know what pop music is!!" They are an easy classical, or at a push light jazz sort of company. At least, they were.
MrT
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