I called in at our local chemist’s shop this morning looking for corn plasters. I suppose I might have found them in the co-op store but the chemist’s seemed like a better bet. The shop has a loud bell which rings in a good old-fashioned way as you open the door, supposedly to alert the shop keeper to your presence. No sign of a shop keeper! I quickly found what I was looking for and went to the counter to pay. From there I could see three people in the back room of the shop, all busy answering the phone, putting prescriptions into packages, sorting this and that, taking no notice of what was going on in the shop itself. I could probably have walked out with my corn plasters and they would have been none the wiser! Eventually one of them finished talking on the telephone and made her way into the shop proper. Not what I would call good customer service.
That is the only shop in the village, by the way, that closes for lunch in the old fashioned way.
Long gone are they days when everything stopped for lunch and when towns had half-day closing, many places choosing Tuesday but some choosing Wednesday. The last vestige of that seems to be the chemist’s around here which all close at midday on Saturday.
When I worked in a shoe shop as a student, during the summer holidays, because we were located in a seaside town, the shop remained open on half-day closing afternoon, as it did on Bank Holidays when many shops closed, in order to catch passing tourist trade. It always struck me as odd that you might go to the seaside for a day out and then decide to go and buy shoes but I wasn’t complaining - after all we were paid time and a half for working on a day when the shop should have been closed.
That’s enough nostalgia for today.
Here’s some fake news! It may have nothing to do with photo-shopped images of members of the royal family, but apparently somebody posted on social media in Russia yesterday that Charles Windsor had died. The Russian website Gazeta.Ru originally tweeted: “King Charles III of Great Britain has died. This is reported by Buckingham Palace. The monarch was 75 years old. He was recently diagnosed with cancer.” Of course, it spread like wildfire. But it was later edited to add: “At the same time, nothing has been written about this in the official British media. Most likely, the information is fake.” One top Russian media editor also published the article, writing: “I can’t tell if it’s true or not.” Later, he suggested, the website of Buckingham Palace had probably been “hacked”.
Another version making the rounds was an abdication letter, admittedly naming Charles’s successor as “King Bob, the yellow Minion”. I rather like this one!
Ultimately, the newsflash came from the Russian state news agency Tass: “King Charles III continues to perform his official duties and attend private engagements.”
Fun and games!
The latest game, of course, is Kate-Spotting. Quite a lot of people grow indignant at the idea of her being “hounded by the press” but it doesn’t stop them looking out for the chance to take a sneaky photos.
Another ‘royal’ matter is an ancient galleon off the coast of Colombia. Laden with treasure it was going to Spain to help fund the War if Spanish Succession but was sunk by the British navy in 1708. The Colombian navy found out where it was in 2015 but kept it’s location secret to prevent looting. Modern pirates don’t find buried treasure on desert islands but down at the bottom of the sea. Now they want to raise the ship, as was done with Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, and make a museum of it. The problem is that everyone and their grandmothers are making claims on the treasure: Spain, because it was a Spanish ship; Colombia, because it was sunk of their coast; indigenous people of Bolivia, because their people probably mined the gold and silver now on the ship; and a US salvage company, as they helped to locate the wreck. I’m surprised we haven’t put in a claim on the grounds that we sank it!
I would love to see the treasure. And I wonder how much more is down at the bottom of the deep blue sea. Send for the pirates!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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