I love Mankind, it’s People I can’t Stand!

So for my daily bread I meander up to Sainsburys early on.  Wandering around early usually means there are less women barging into you with their trolleys or allowing their brats to run along the frozen veg.  Only one or two managed to look one way while going the other and I quickly got to the checkout.

Now as you know God invented supermarket checkouts.  These were designed to test his saints, and they succeed in this task in many ways.  Today I allowed a sweet old lady with four, yes four, peaches to go before me.  This was to her benefit and hindered me nought as it was one item.  Wrong!  Not only did she attempt to get them free with a voucher, a voucher for the wrong store I should add, she then took several minutes to pay one coin at a time.  Not only one coin at a time, but, you have guessed this, the wrong coins.  Eventually she was finished and as I pondered my need to shave again I reached out for a carrier bag.  So did she, for her four peaches which she had yet to bag!  I let her go first, turned round and the checkout girl had run away!

A new grumpy bint took her place and served me while conducting a conversation with her mate behind her, all the time looking the other way! Somewhat irritated, (the word ‘somewhat’ in this context does not express the full meaning!), I collected my five items, paid for them, accepted my change when it came – eventually, and departed close to high dudgeon!

She did however remind me of the lass I once knew who had skin like a peach.  Have you ever seen a twenty three year old peach?  Yeeeuch!

I once wrote a reply to a newspaper item that discussed a shopping centre that possessed a ‘crèche for men.’  This was a place they could relax while she did the shopping.  I then pointed out we needed a ‘Men Only’ day in shops.  This way men could do their shopping quickly and efficiently with little hassle, being a pleasurable experience for both shoppers and shop staff.  None of this running up four floors of a store just to touch a piece of cloth, mutter,”Hmmm,” and go all the way back again as I have known some women to do!  Rest assured a man shopping is a quick and easy experience.  A shop full of women extends the day by two hours for everyone!

The point is, it is so easy to ‘Love your neighbour’ when surrounded by folks on a Sunday morning.  Church folk tend to put up a ‘I love you all’ screen then, but the real man is hidden just below the surface.  In the real world our nature comes to the fore and when Jesus talked about people he knew just what they are like.  As a builder he had to work with lazy as well as efficient workmates.  He meet crooked masters, disreputable rogues, women who gossiped and men who stole and cheated.  In fact his world, in spite of the ‘cultural’ differences was just like the one you and I meet daily.  How easy to ‘Love your neighbour’ when a disaster strikes,  how difficult when he plays the trombone at three in the morning!  In Deuteronomy somewhere it says, ‘Speak frankly with your neighbour, but do not hate him in your heart.’  How difficult I find this at supermarket checkouts!  This has always been a problem for me.  Actually I also had to pop into Tesco where the young lady ( a blond barmaid in the near future if you ask me) was friendly, helpful and witty.  I should have gone their first!