intertext

My neighbour-across-the-road, E. (not to be confused, by long-time readers of this blog, with my "silly neighbours-at-the-bottom"), is a darling: kind, generous to a fault, always keeping an eye out for people in a caring rather than nosy way. She is not, however, exactly the brightest woman I know. She's only ten years older than I, but in some ways reminds me of my mother in her ingrained helplessness. Anyway. She has a computer, which she uses effectively for email - her son is in Japan, and other relatives are in Sweden. Although I doubt that she's at much risk for viruses (hardly the sort to be downloading porn), she has been faithfully using Norton Anti-Virus for years, and equally faithfully trotting her computer down to Future Shop to have it installed, to the tune of $60. When I found out about this, I told her that she must NOT, repeat NOT pay that much for something that takes five minutes to do, and offered to help her out. The evil acquisitiveness of Future Shop is further enhanced by what followed: when she went to buy this year's update, it was sold out. They had another brand, but told her that she would have to uninstall Norton, which would, of course, necessitate her bringing in her computer, and a further charge. They see her coming. However, luckily she asked me first and I told her to do nothing of the kind and that I would do it for her, too. I think she felt a bit silly when I showed her the two seconds it took to uninstall Norton and the few minutes it took to install the new software.

Yesterday, I was buying groceries at Thrifty's, and completely captivated by the manner with which the check out person packed them. She did them with such flair, as if she were expecting to get points for style. Each bag (Thrifty's encourages us to bring cloth ones), was deftly folded at the top. Each item was eyed, carefully judged for weight, size and vulnerability and placed very deliberately in the appropriate bag with hands held just "so," fingers tips pointed gracefully and lightly. She was an unprepossessing looking young woman, rather stodgy, scowling with concentration, but when I told her how impressed I was by the style of her packing, her face lit up, and she was beautiful.

Down the south end of the Quadra St strip, next to the Roger's Video Store, there is a new, fairly up-market liquor store, filled with organic wines, small brewery beers and high-end gin. Readers of my blog will not be surprised to hear that I am delighted by this development. Last night, I dropped in, after picking up a video to watch over the weekend. It was doing a roaring trade - working class neighbourhood? Friday night? Of course! But I found myself wondering, as young men whiffing of BC bud walked out with cans of Coors, whether we are quite gentrified enough for what is obviously an establishment with some pretensions to style. Oh well, time will tell. They'll do good business, I'm sure. And perhaps there will be enough customers like me, willing to try saffron gin and happy to buy organic wine, to justify keeping those delights in stock.