‘Now’ is what I’m getting used too. The quick email on my phone, the instant relief of checking my Facebook as SOON as someone leaves me a wall messsage. “What time is my train to London later?”, I ask before setting off for the station. Blamo! iPhone out and I’m in my Trainline app getting the answer pronto.
‘Now!’, is what’s cool in the fashion world. If a new Milan collection isn’t reported on ‘Now!’, the minute it has nimbly breezed round the corner onto the catwalk, we won’t want to know. Because someone else has written about it already. ‘Now!’, is the new black, ‘Now!’ is leggings, ‘Now!’ is sliced bread and ‘Now!’… is getting me a little over-excited.
So, no surprises then when I tell you about my recent spout of “all over hives” and instant-kidney stones when I found myself seething behind a lady in Bristol Sainsburys somewhere down the cheese isle. Completely disabled of my ‘Now!’ fix.
It goes like this. I’m ready to grab my yellow mature blocks of curdle. “Buy one, get one free”, the plastic red label screams. So I’d be a fool not too! Grab it now and then I can carry on checking my text messages over there by the pitta bread.
Apparently however,’Now!’, doesn’t apply to everyone, especially those without iPhones. So, ‘Now!’, is what’s left me anxious, sweaty and hanging around like an anxious pigeon behind a female who’s living in the past-tense.
For some reason, right, she’s decided that her choice requires time. Not grabbing the first thing with a red label next to it.
So even if the supermarket has picked a cheese for me, until she’s a nano-second past her choice and moving off, I can’t strike like the carnivore I am and grab the 500 grammes of yellow love.
Enter now, my Contemporary British Conundrum, or CBC for short. Being so used to getting things, ‘Now!’, all I can think of is reaching right out in front of her silly indecisive hands to yoink the cheese. However, I’m parried by my damned childhood manners and realise, “that kind of rude impatience” was genetically removed out of me, like all middle-class children at a very young age.
So, the result of my CBC. I’m left a young man, confused and baffled by my lack of ‘Now!’. All I can manage to do is shift around from foot-to-foot. Bobbing within centimetres of her shoulder and staring at the shelf like a confused puppy.
‘Now!’, roll on 2 full minutes. Interspersed only uncomfortably swivelling and walking 5 paces away followed by me walking immediately 5 paces back.
‘Now!’ is what’s left me with a cuffed ear and a near mace experience as she noticed and dresses me down with her upper class “Will you stop dribbling on my shoulder please”.
Sulk.
[Picture from http://www.geekologie.com/2007/07/16/now-watch.jpg]
