The Man in the Supermarket and the Woman with a Pencil
Two stories that will not leave my head until I write them down for you. One from today and one from fifty years ago. Welcome to Cecilia’s Sustainable Sunday.
The Man in the Supermarket. Present Day
I rarely shop. I prefer to grow my own food and go without all this stuff that comes sanitised in brightly coloured packaging. Not to mention I try incredibly hard not to bring anything I need to recycle into my home, pre-cycling is so much better for the environment than recycling. Don’t you think? However. Needs must. And I needed a new sheet. For my bed. Only one mind. My foot had gone through my already thrice mended bottom sheet that morning so I relegated it to the rag bag. I had spent a good hour that morning, taking as long as possible to cut the sheet into hanky sized pieces with my pinking sheers so as to put off the trip to the shops.
But there I was. In the Big Box Shop. Literally in a big box. An uninspiring concrete box designed like a trap for mouse people. Shopping for one sheet (and a few other things to make the trip worth it because that is what shopping is all about). Like coffee for instance and lemons.
I never walk the supermarket with my eyes down, I almost never focus on the products instead I make a game of meeting as many eyes as possible and smiling a greeting. To make the dreaded shopping expedition more about the people and less about spending money. (I think there must be some Scots in my background because I hate spending money). I was cruising down the coffee aisle, pulled up past a man going in the opposite direction, and saw a beautiful brindle pup sitting perfectly well behaved in his shopping trolley. He was going to be a big dog and sported one of those lovely comfy harnesses that all the best dogs wear now.
“What a lovely pup”. I said.
The man stopped what he was doing (pushing his trolley) and looking straight ahead said. “Yes.” He looked down at his dog then back up again.
“And so good” I enthused. God, I thought I sound like one of those awful little old ladies who spend all day alone then go to the supermarket to talk to people. Then I thought - maybe I am.
The man was a tall well padded black man, probably in his thirties or early forties, clean shaven, jeans, T shirt and black jacket, his belly prominent, hair just long enough. He looked at the shelves beside him then at the dog, carefully avoiding my eyes and said “Yeah. He is a good dog”. I sensed that the man was trying to look smaller - given he was tall and well padded - not furtive or anything but I felt he was gathering his metaphorical cloak about him. Trying to be less there in a way. Trying not to catch my eyes in case - in case what - I was not sure. Maybe I was scary. Maybe he had just had something happen and his nerves were a bit frayed. Got fired or worn out from marking tests all day. You just never know what people are going through, I thought. I hesitated.
I did not attempt to pat the dog - it always feels a little invasive to rub ones hands all over another persons dog.
The man leaned over to fondle the ear of his dog. Maybe sensing that I wanted to do that but never would.
"My dogs would never sit like that," I said. "Well, maybe one of them would" (thinking of Ton, who is old, blind, and so slow now that he would probably just go to sleep in the shopping trolley, and I would have to carry him to the car like a slumbering toddler.) "But the other one, Boo, he would not be able to sit still and would probably trail dog hair all over the store and growl at people," I said. "He is not that terribly well-behaved. Great with his baby farm animals, and there is this one pig that he guards so no-ones steals his food but he does not come off the farm often."
The man’s posture relaxed ever so slightly and his dog sighed and lay back down in the shopping cart.
I thought to myself that you would not want to do a really big shop with a growing dog like that taking up so much room.
"How many dogs have you got?" he asked me, leaning in slightly.
"Two," I said. "Two old farm dogs."
He nodded and then launched into a story of how his pup got hit by a car and forgot all his 'bathroom training' (I love American euphemisms). He could not leave him in the house by himself, so he had brought him to the supermarket to get some training treats.
"Good thinking," I said. "Close and busy. The best for dogs and kids. I paused then said “That must have been frightening, seeing your dog hit by a car like that."
He nodded. Swallowed.
"I bought these treats for him," he said and picked up a bag from the trolley. "I need to read the back and see how many he can have in a day." The man tentatively brought the bag closer to me. We both peered at the back to see what information we could glean from print so small a mouse could not even read it. It might as well have been written by a spider.
“Why do they make the small print so small,” I said. “It is as though they don’t actually want us to read what’s in these things.”
I leaned right in; he smelled clean, chemical-free. (I always feel bad smelling people—don't you? I mean, no one wants to know that someone is smelling you, right? But I do it quite unconsciously and kindly.) I reached over and turned his hand so I could read the package. (Old people get away with all kinds of shit like that).
"Hmm," I said (eloquent as usual). The ingredient list was indeed very short, and I could understand every word. "Where did you get these? I bet my dogs would like these too."
He raised his eyes right up and tentatively looked at me sideways, his face still in profile. I looked straight back at him, captured his deep brown eyes with my pale blue ones, and smiled. There you are, I thought.
He smiled back, with relief I hoped and turning himself right around he pointed to the next aisle “One over and in the middle, on the left.” He said.
I thanked him.
“Your dog is so relaxed” I said “You must be a good dog owner.”
He returned the bag of treats to his trolley and we both settled our hands into the accustomed supermarket position on our respective cart handles.
He smiled with all his white teeth and we moved our carts apart and proceeded on our way.
“I love your accent.” He called back.
I laughed. I turned. Still laughing. “Thank you. I was born with it! And really wish I had a dollar for every time someone said that to me”.
“I bet you do.” He joined my laughter.
We pulled a little further apart. Our moment having come to a natural parting.
“Thank you.” He said. I looked back again.
“Thank you for taking the time.” He said.
He smiled, nodded like a salute, then leaned forward and patting his dogs velvety head he rolled around the corner and out of sight.
CMBWC
Sustainable Sunday Tip: Compost or Chickens
It is estimated that 330 million pounds of food is wasted a day in America and that is a major hazard to the environment and the economy in so many ways. Think of all those workers who picked and packed that food for us and we let it go to waste. Horrible.
There are some great roller composters that can sit on your deck or if you are lucky enough to have a garden get a couple of chickens - they are ten times easier to manage than a cat and they eat all your food scraps.
Just don’t get a rooster.
The Woman with the Pencil - 1976
I am not a writer. Though I write. If good punctuation constitutes a good writer then I am a poor one. But I have always loved word play.
I was sixteen when I went to work for two weeks at the local daily bewspaper. This was before I went to the USA as an exchange student then came home completely de-railed and got pregnant weeks later. Life is for living. Anyway I was a skinny teenager with wild curly hair and no dress sense at all and I managed to score a fortnight as a cadet in the news room of our local daily newspaper. I wanted to be a reporter. Actually I wanted to be a photo-journalist for the National Geographic but didn’t we all. I knew I should start out as a reporter though.
My great-grandfather was a reporter for the Timaru Herald in NZ. (We called them reporters in those days.) My grandmother would tell stories of walking around town with her reporter father, gathering the news of the day on foot. They would literally grab their coats and hats (my great-grandmother was a milliner) and walk to a person's house or place of business. They would sit down with them, have a cup of tea, ask the questions, and make notes with a pencil on paper.
Then, they would walk briskly back to the newspaper to type the story up, have a runner run it to the editor, retype it, have another runner run it down to the lithographer, the typeset guy who could think inside out and upside down (my uncle was this person) and have the story inserted into whichever page the editor decided before the printers started rolling. Often, this was done at speed and to very strict deadlines.
The trucks and the paper boys with their bikes were waiting outside for the news hot off the press. Literally.
In those days: we listened to Alistair Cooke, Letter from America - ironically produced by the BBC.
We watched Walter Cronkite with his news and signing off “and that’s the way it is”.
News was respected. Opinions were for the editorial. Journalists had to cite their sources. There were repercussions for wrongful reporting. Real ones. No-one ever would start a news release with ‘There is potential for’, ‘could possibly’, ‘thousands might be impacted if’, etc.
I remember an exercise that we did with newspapers in class with Sister Damien. (Sister Damien was grounded in fact, and quantifiable value, she even said that drawing the curtains on a sunny day was a venal sin - she actually quantified sins- we wondered if she had a list). Anyway we were given copies of the Daily Telegraph, instructed to cut out an article then underline EACH FACT. Only believe a fact you can prove, she said. Then she asked us to prove how we could prove the fact we had underlined.
The news carried weight.
No-one was allowed to speak when Dad was either watching the news, the weather or listening to the call up on his valve radio. (The call up was twice a day when all the fishermen checked in from their boats at sea). News from the sea. As I told you before, we girls were encouraged to read the newspaper diligently every day so we had something to talk about.
My Dad once famously told us that there was a trial to prove any theory. Debate at the dinner table about the news was not an argument, there were rules, they were debates. Especially about the news.
So the pursuit of truth and the gathering of information was already pouring a foundation into my teenage brain.
The newspaper business in the early 70’s was still very like the newspaper business in the 1940’s but with reliable electricity and better phones. So Grandma said anyway.
The Daily Telegraph, where I was to spend a fortnight in work experience, was housed in a beautiful building that had been reconstructed after the 1931 earthquake. The '30s marked an exquisite period in architecture, and the Daily Telegraph building stands out as an extraordinary example. However, we did not realize it then, in the '70s; it was simply a lovely building among many others. The large glass and brass double doors at the front of the building were perfectly proportioned in the art deco style, reflecting the architectural trends seen up and down the streets of Napier. (Although the building no longer serves as a newspaper, it is still there, meticulously maintained, preserving its timeless beauty).
I was led through the massive doors and a wide corridor to the reporters' room. I remember it as a spacious area packed with overflowing wooden desks, each paired with large wooden swinging desk chairs on wheels - some occupied, others abandoned. Partitions divided the room, the bottom half of these partitions were polished wood and the top half beveled glass, with expansive windows along one side casting a pale wintry light into the space. The room reeked with the distinct odors of ink and mens bodies and old cigarettes, the hint of sulphur as a match flared, the puff of a fresh cigar, along with the constant clack and smack of typewriters.
It was a bustling scene, filled with people about their business accompanied by the rhythmic pounding of typewriters. Runners hurried to and fro, and the Reuters machine, a contraption I did not even pretend to understand, occassionally churning out paper bearing international news in short telegram form. The national news radio lobbed more noise into the background.
I was assigned to a woman reporter for the day. (We called them reporters but really I guess they were journalists - the semantics are muddy). She was the only woman in the room, the other desks seemed to house older white men with comb overs who chased stories through the courthouses and theaters and the hospital on the hill and the port. I was young and everyone looked old and white with a comb over. The lady reporter was young and brittle and not terribly impressed to be saddled with an eager school girl with too much hair so I was told to come along and stay quiet. She had long dark hair and wore a lot of green eyeshadow under her horn rimmed glasses. That day she wore a short green skirt, with long tan boots, some kind of blouse, she grabbed her notepad and and threw a long tan coat over the whole thing as she tore out the door all bosom and briskness. I rehitched my satchel on my shoulder and leapt after her. Following the trail of smoke from her cigarette to her little white Morris Minor.
On our way she told me we were driving up the hill to a new posh subdivision to interview a woman about her house and garden.
We sipped tea in the perfectly appointed living room, the triangular coffee table holding a silver tray, opposite a shiny low slung wooden liquor cabinet that matched the coffee table and doubled as a record player, seated on a linen rose-patterned couch. The lady reporter smiled, crossing her feet at the ankles and arranging them just so. With her spiral bound notepad skillfully balanced on her knee, she posed gentle questions, drinking her tea and making notes with her pencil at the same time. I was deeply impressed by her shorthand skills, transfixed as she effortlessly recorded all the details of the gardens in squiggles and patterns into her notebook. We sat in the elegance of this woman's beautiful lounge, which offered a delightful view of her well-tended garden and behaved.
All was peaceful and good.
The reporter and I wandered the garden afterwards taking some photos with her camera. I was pretty good at taking photos by then I was too afraid to offer to help.
She handed me her bag and her camera.
“This was not what I wanted to write about,” she said. Her eyes showing signs of crinkles as she squinted against a shriek of low winter sun shafting across the garden. She paused. Searching for the words.
"Don’t let them send you out to do articles on gardens just because you are a woman," she said, although it was evident that this was precisely what she had been sent to do and why. “Men garden.'‘ she muttered to herself as she reached into her coat pocket. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head, saying, "Sixteen."
"Right." she said, pulling out matches and lighting up, drawing on the cigarette with intense loathing.
Once we were back out on the road, she stubbed the cigarette out with the toe of her boot and climbed into her car.
She started the engine as I climbed in and put it into gear, then flipped it back out of gear again and sat back in her car. There was no heater, so it was cold. I waited. She sighed.
"My Mum wanted me to work at Woolworths for a while, get married, and have babies."
I nodded, suspecting that my own mother felt the same.
We were quiet for a while. Watching the wind in the pines.
"I know some fishermen you could go talk to. One of them has a rifle in his wheelhouse in case he needs it at sea," I said. "He had to shoot a shark on deck once." This seemed to be an interesting question to ask, I thought. Why the rifle? Why the rifle at sea? Were there pirates? Bad fishing characters? If a person were to poach a fish, it stood to reason that there were poachers - that could be a cool play on words. Spelling the spells out.
Was she even allowed to look for stories on her own?
She looked at me and blinked, as though her car had begun to talk.
"Hmm," she said. And putting the car back into gear, we drove back to the Daily Telegraph where she sent me to the darkroom with the canister of film while she typed up the story about the lady and her roses.
CMBWG
TKG Take Ten
My favorite Take Ten this week was: Tuesday : Sounds of the Sky.
The Take Ten is enjoying surprising popularity. Thank you!!
Zig when everyone else Zags. As DAMON BROWN says, (he was citing the blue ocean strategy, if you get traction going in the opposite direction as others you will have the whole sea to yourself for a while.
TKG Take Ten is very different- longer than they recommend PLUS in a horizontal format.
But as Warren Buffet (dubious source at best because I cannot agree with his theories on avoiding taxes but then I am definitely earning less than his secretary. ) "I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy."
Zig when others Zag.
Looking back as others look forward.
I will continue to resist putting Take Ten into a vertical (portrait) format - holding on like hell to the landscape because it is incredibly not fashionable - a terrible marketing strategy - people will need to turn the screens on their phones - woe betide if we ask people to move their wrists sideways.
But we simply see more of the farm this way.
The Kitchens Garden . com (TKG)
The most popular blog post this week was. It was New Years Eve - though I have no idea why. The images are lovely and I had been waxing lyrical. But this week will be even better because we have SNOW and I love taking photographs of snow.
Have a lovely Sunday evening!
Don’t forget to comment. I love a good comment.
And 🛵 remember this is a reader supported publication. The 🦋 pigs and I are so grateful for your support especially when you upgrade to Paid.🐞
Your writing is always so easy to read. A good way to start the day.
I loved listening to this!