We included JL in a search for a new oven. The staff are unfailingly charming and seek to help.
The particular infant we got attached to however made a schoolboy error … which, fair play, Ithink he was.
Mrs. Shanks, is a woman not to be triffled with even if you use the very best custard and have excellent 100’s and 1,000’s. She wanted a double oven. With the smaller oven, doubling as a grill, to be gas based. This was the same as the recently defunct one. We were singularly failing in the quest at a wide range of oven shops.
Mrs. S wanted this combination very badly. If, for some reason, it wasn’t available she at least wanted a sympathetic ear. The seller needed to understand why their lack of supply of same was a calumny and to allow themselves to be told this at considerable length.
What she did not want was an embryo talking down to her.
‘James’ was not getting the signs. I stood slightly behind her, facing him, gurning “no, don’t say that” faces. Shaking my head. Widening my eyes.
James, however, was on a roll. I decided to step back and give him room. It was then that he said it … I genuinely forgot to breath for some time. My hands and arms involuntarily twitched.
From his scarce bearded face came the tilt of a head, a sympathetic smile and then … the words … “I’m afraid, madam, there is no demand for that !”
She explained to his dismembered body parts that there most certainly WAS a demand … and SHE was it. She would not be spoken to like this by a 5 year old and demanded to see someone who had existed in the C20th.
I’m uncertain when the Court Order is removed but she’s been allowed to be within 6 miles of James for quite a while now.
I quite liked John Lewis.
