Annalog

I don’t know anything about  merchandising

but  when you have a multi outlet chain, it stands to reason that  different things will sell better in different areas, the  success of shop layout may vary –  bigger works better in an area of  socially mobile glamour , smaller where there is a stable  population, more to do with what you can afford than impressing the neighbours. Some  boom with  automation,  some prefer to have  at least a few humans so you can buy  2 items, change one,   discuss a problem – why this is still out of stock after three weeks, etc. – it’s the personal touch.

And I am convinced,  of course I am, that the personal is what makes the difference – through the staff to the customers and out of the door – to bring them back again.

Since 18 July when  my local Waitrose closed, reopening  18 September – I have had  to  deal with Etsy goofs,

systems  with more knots  than a sea scout manual, and the NHS , accessing a new letter from whom yesterday took  20 sweaty minutes.  I tried buying a sweater from H&M  yesterday, to  be charged five times over, couldn’t clear it,  threw the  whole thing out, swore and started again.   It’s only easier when it’s easier. 

Mostly  it makes you long for the transaction that took place in the dry cleaning and tailoring outlet this morning – enter, go behind curtain to change into  garment to be altered, pinned into place,

given receipt, agree date for collection, have a nice day.     Apart  from being one bus ride away and much closer than  any other branch, MLW (My Local Waitrose)  has got its size and  its  esprit de corps  off to an art form.  It works for us, it works for them , they work for us.

Every name that follows is fake, everything else is real.   Winifred embraced me at the door – she makes me think of the women of whom Nelson Mandela said “When you strike them, you have struck the rock.”   I went to find Matthew  the manager who had promised me that everyone who wanted to come back, could – to offer congratulations. Enzo kissed me on both cheeks.   Miranda who calls me Miss Anna hugged me  – “how lovely to see you” we kept saying to each other  – and it was she who told me “Oh we quite  enjoyed where we were – you know, a change  and all that – but we missed the customers !” 

  Panan, whom I first met as a boy and shared books with, a dazzler,  greeted me  and reappeared  five minutes later with flowers.   Of course I know it’s the company that pays  – it’s also the company that thinks. Slava and I shared not a word, just a long meaningful embrace.   She is still a long way from home  …

There was a young man playing old  folk rock on a guitar, glasses of wine,  happy excited voices, some new people  but a lot of what  you might call shopping familiars – people you see there day in, day out,  week after week, the people who ask after you when they notice they haven’t seen you for a bit.  As the staff noticed when I was taken ill – that was moving.  They see so many people.   And then up came Rosie  who when I last saw her, had to have dental work done and was  very nervous about it – all done now.  And when I said  what a welcome, she grinned and said “Well for you it comes at a price –  we want you to give us a good write up”.      

It is a wonderful thing to feel that you can have all the items you  always want, as well as new lines: that the frozen stuff has been tucked into newly efficient self effacing wall cabinets, priority still given to fresh fruit and vegetables (one of the very few places that sell  cooking apples – and  no not for pies : for stewed apple which I now sweeten with marmalade instead of sugar.)   

I wish you could teach more people that if you don’t give, you can’t get back.  It doesn’t follow that because you’re nice, everybody is nice to you.  But it is a position of strength.  Think of the  niceness diffused  out into the atmosphere.   Social investment, never wasted.   And you can only afford nice in a big set up like MLW, if  the way the thing runs is more of less correctly positioned and  you can go from there.  In other words, the  professional makes possible the personal.

Of course this comes

in various stages – when you go to secondary school or university, when you  pass your driving test, when you get yourself into a first class financial screwup and sort it out yourself.  Or have your first cigarette, expensive, bad for you but lovely.  You have  cigarettes, I have  a rare  YSL or Chanel lipstick because the colours always work for me and I wear them till they are gone.

Growing up  goes on and on,

much longer than you expect if you are open to it and I am.  You  remain so because it is the light in the sky and at least some of the keys to one of the kingdoms.   Not shut cupboards – open doors.

News is a fascinating business because there are so many people involved in discovering,  packaging and bringing forward issues  the rest of us haven’t thought about, don’t know about.“I wasn’t  listening”  Nigel Farage is quoted as saying which sums up both  the  enchantment and the danger of Reform – not listening to anybody  but themselves.      

There are always  stories that appeal to you and those you shove away, not of interest.  There are what we might call “sleepers” – stories that have been around for ages – like the woman who  killed her three children in the US.  This has highlighted the isolation, exhaustion and sheer unwellness of multiple early motherhood ie several children under (say) 9.

What I have yet to read about  is the  husband’s part in all this and how  extraordinarily slowly  social history  changes.  This is the week that one of the most committed American feminists Gloria Steinem

died, the end of a life devoted to a life you could live ie not everybody wants to be married, have a husband and have children.  Hardly new but clearly still new to some.  You and a partner – that’s one thing – but if you are not going to do children well, don’t have them.  Wanting them is not the whole story – it’s why you want them.  I have sat with men and women who have known from their earliest beginnings that they were not wanted.

Growing up means choosing a version of events to which you can commit.   I was brought up to go to work.  It has shaped and fed my life and made me grow up.   I didn’t set out to have one child, it’s the way things worked out.  But I would rather have one with whom I have a relationship of meaning,

still, he 45, me 82 – that’s my growing up, perhaps some of it, and commitment.

Growing up means you can buy all the sleeveless  things you like, I can’t wear them they don’t  become me and I would always rather have  long sleeves rolled up.  Even in my recent stay in hospital I didn’t see a woman in a nightdress that became her.  

I cheered for the tv critic who lambasted  cop shows on tv – choosing is growing up.  I would rather switch off the worst tv programming it has ever been – mindless repeats, cop and game shows – and read a book.  Or do a crossword, Or go for a walk.   Or the clean the kitchen cupboards, anything rather than sit there, glazed, in front of nothing I want to watch.     

Growing up involves facing what there is – not what you wish there was.  Friendship changes as you grow up.  

I have just filed a friend of many years because he can’t do change.  It has to be as it was because (a) that’s what he wants and (b) he can’t hack it any other way.   It had been coming for 2 years.  And it came.   One more step on the pavement to maturation.

There is no final point in growing up, you don’t “pass” as in an exam.  There is a series of markers where you reflect on steps forward.    Growing up doesn’t mean growing old – though that comes to us all.    Growing up is the journey and great quote from Elliott Gould it is always now.