I have come to know him quite well over the years just by seeing him once a week.<\/p>\n
I found out that he is musically inclined, playing the accordion \u2013 by ear only, it is true. His wife has a nice singing voice, I heard. I invited them both to the first village concert. Unfortunately they had to attend a twenty-first birthday party on the same night and were therefore prevented.<\/p>\n
Next year when another concert was coming round, I mentioned it to the Greengrocer\u2019s wife. She said: \u201cOh dear, it\u2019s balancing night (a Friday); we won\u2019t be able to make it. The next thing I knew was that Aldous\u2019 wife had sold them two tickets. How had she managed, I wondered. She had entered the shop, she said, having heard that I considered them potential customers \u2013 this was before I had spoken to his wife \u2013 and chance would have it there was only him present. She brandished the programmes saying: \u201cHere are your tickets, dear.\u201d He hardly knew what they were for, asked how much he owed and paid her on the spot. Aldous\u2019 wife was pleased with herself. On the night of the concert I was looking for them, but didn\u2019t see them until the end. He called out to me as I was passing: \u201cHallo, my dear, didn\u2019t you see us?\u201d And we shook hands. It\u2019s nice bumping into friends.<\/p>\n
He told me he was a coach driver at one time, doing tours to the Continent, driving up and down the Austrian Alps. Grossglockner particularly memorable because of the inadequate brakes his vehicle was equipped with. Vacuum brakes. He gave me a long talk on how they worked. The gist of it was that the rarefied air at an altitude of 12,000 feet or so had a negative impact on their efficiency. Quite risky up on top and especially coming down. Of course the situation improved as one lost altitude. He was young then and had good nerves. I paid him compliments on his knowledge of technical processes and his ability to explain them. He pointed out with modest pride that he had been a car mechanics and maintenance teacher at a college of adult education at one time.
\nHe has pleasant memories of a breakdown he had with a coach in Southern Germany. He pronounced the name of the place he had to stop at well enough for me to recognize it \u2013 quite a complicated name. How nice to hear I knew the place, in fact I had lived not too far from it. He praised the hospitality of the locals and their efforts to help.<\/p>\n
He is one of these marvellous English all-round-men who can do any job indoors and outdoors. In addition he runs a shop and looks after people\u2019s pension books. Like Mr and Mrs Orms\u2019. He keeps them for them, because the Orms are in hospital.<\/p>\n
The other day the Orms sent me to collect money from him. Mrs Orms had given me a letter of authorization which she had forgotten to sign. She had also not thought about signing the pension book. \u201cI\u2019ll let you have the money, of course,\u201d the Greengrocer said to me, \u201cbut it\u2019s not the way it should be\u201d, and he made me sign on the back where it says \u201cagent\u2019s signature\u201d. He had to do without Mrs Orms\u2019. When I collect Mrs Rivers\u2019 pension, I always sign on the front for her. This goes back to the time when there were no books because of a strike. Everybody had to sign on a large sheet in the post-office. When the books came back, I kept on signing for her, on the front. My friend remarked after a while it wasn\u2019t quite the right way, but agreed to accept it as long as nobody else objected to it. This saves me the trouble of running after Mrs Rivers\u2019 signature every week \u2013 he quite sees that.<\/p>\n
Our little chats cover a wide range of subjects. When Valentine\u2019s Day was coming I asked him had he ever received a card. He said \u201cno\u201d and I thought to myself I would have to do something about it. I wonder whether he could read my mind\u2026I went back after a few days to look at their Valentine cards. I had bought some elsewhere and needed one more. Not for the Greengrocer, his was already done. I didn\u2019t like their cards in the end, but didn\u2019t want to tell them. I said instead: \u201cHe doesn\u2019t deserve one after all!\u201d and left the shop without buying one. I never heard anything about the Valentine card I had sent him. One day much later he pushed a stamp through to me, underneath his security glass, by means of a paper. I didn\u2019t recognise the vehicular function of the paper immediately and asked jokingly: \u201cWhat is that? A love letter?\u201d His wife said from the background, also jokingly: \u201cI beg your pardon!\u201d The Greengrocer beamed out of his friendly eyes and I couldn\u2019t help asking had he ever received a Valentine card. He said he had. He never thought it was from me, because having heard me say \u201cHe doesn\u2019t deserve one\u201d, he had assumed I wouldn\u2019t send him one after all. I was amazed to be quoted so long after the event and remembered I had put three XXX on the card. Only on paper, I\u2019m pleased to say. I wouldn\u2019t like to cause ill feelings for nothing.<\/p>\n
He and his wife went for an outing once with a group of people. In a mini-bus which broke down. The Vicar and his wife were there, too, and very good, the Greengrocer said, because they managed to keep everybody in good spirits.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not church-goers really. They don\u2019t have the time. It would be nice, though, to go to church. It makes a nice Sunday: get up leisurely, enjoy breakfast, do what one fancies, go to church, come back and have lunch\u2026a pleasant day. The trouble is, it takes time. It takes a big chunk out of the morning getting ready for it, going there, coming back, changing into old clothes again\u2026This business of changing clothes! You have to look right when you go there! The Greengrocer\u2019s wife was very critical of this: \u201cHow important is it really?\u201d She made more scathing comment: \u201cMost of the people going there are\u2026\u201dI don\u2019t like to repeat the word. She told me it was our every day life that counts, and certainly non-church-goers could be very good Christians, couldn\u2019t they? I hastened to agree. She told me when her father had died she was very upset and asked a clergyman, had he gone to heaven? The clergyman apparently asked back, was he a church-goer in his life-time? Hearing that, no, that wasn\u2019t the case, he said: he won\u2019t have gone to heaven then. The Greengrocer\u2019s wife thought that was very naughty. It had put her right off. Fancy coming for comfort, and that\u2019s what you get!<\/p>\n
The Greengrocer didn\u2019t seem unduly impressed. He smiled as I said bye-bye and remarked that we\u2019d have to find another subject of conversation next time I came.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have come to know him quite well over the years just by seeing him once a week. I found out that he is musically inclined, playing the accordion \u2013 by ear only, it is true. His wife has a nice singing voice, I heard. I invited them both to the first village concert. Unfortunately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-aloud"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}