To cut a long story shortish: my local library, which has been run by a children’s charity since the council removed its funding in 2012, has a weekly singing group for babies and toddlers. It’s a fantastic way to get parents, carers and children out socialising (and socialising together): toddlers that can sing, toddlers that can’t sing, toddlers from big houses, toddlers from council estates, toddlers from the temporary homeless accommodation in the next street, toddlers from the secret underground oligarchs’ lairs that must be round here somewhere… all of them clapping, dancing, speculating confidently as to the stock on Old MacDonald’s farm, then staying on to look at books and catch the reading bug. It’s truly a vision of how you would want society to be. UNLESS YOU’RE EVIL.Well, must check for pointy horns then, because it's my idea of hell...
For some time, the singing group has been hosted by the librarian herself, an excellent woman with a real vocation for the task: she has natural charisma, a lovely singing voice and the children adore her. But she’s thinking she should focus on “more serious” tasks relating to the building and the charity. And that’s because she’s too modest to realise how directly her talent triggers social cohesion, making this important free space feel welcoming to all. So I decided to send her, on behalf of the neighbourhood, 50 miniature tambourines.As you, errrr, do. And in today's modern world, this should be easily accomplished, no?
The volume was meant to be dazzling and a bit silly, like when a rap star sends a thousand roses to a love interest.And provide an excuse for a column, no doubt?
I had it all planned. The huge, mysterious box would arrive; she’d open it to find 50 tambourines; she’d laugh, she’d feel slightly harassed, she’d be ultimately flattered; she’d feel a renewed enthusiasm for the group as she imagined her dozens of tiny singers banging incoherently on dozens of tiny tambourines; she’d feel loved and valued and (I told myself excitedly as I clicked eagerly on to the John Lewis website) maybe she’d remember the gesture for ever.Yes. It's all about you, Victoria.
So you can understand my frustration when, as the day dawned, I started getting a stream of automated text messages that gradually revealed the tambourines were not being delivered in one giant comic batch with my gift note, but in three different parcels, on two different vans, dropped off six hours apart.So..? Isn't the point of this to get them the tambourines?
I say you can understand my frustration. Can you? The John Lewis manager I spoke to could not. She told me that 50 tambourines could not be delivered in one go “for safety reasons” and that she agreed with this “policy”. (No such policy exists, I have subsequently established.) She disagreed with me that this should be advertised at point of sale.Probably thinking all the while 'What the hell's the problem? She's getting the damn tambourines!'...
Essentially, she was prepared to say anything at all, other than sorry. I suddenly found myself crying...Well, I hope that brightened up the John Lewis girl's morning as much as it brightened up mine!
Why cry, though, over a botched tambourine delivery? I’ve asked myself this, as I lie awake at night picturing my sobbing pleas being broadcast to a crowd of giggly new sales staff and clawing lightly at the headboard. I think the answer is: because it’s an increasingly frightening, chaotic, unknowable world and we can only control it (or make sense of it) in small, kindly, hopeful gestures. That’s what this ridiculous purchase was supposed to be. When it failed, I needed the person on the end of the phone to be kind and sympathetic and for the two of us to share a moment of fellow feeling. When that didn’t happen, it all seemed to represent something much bigger than itself.Jeez, you're making a purchase from a company, not communing in an ashram over mint tea!
We all have to interact with large corporations now; too many little shops have been pushed under by them. If we choose John Lewis or Sainsbury’s, it feels, at least, more human scale than Amazon. The big corporation can’t meaningfully care about us, but we need to persuade ourselves that an individual representative could, even if they’re just a disembodied voice on the phone. When you can’t convince us you care, that exposes the relentless grind of the emotionless, profit-hungry machine. It’s frightening and alienating.It exists to take your money in return for goods. Which it fulfilled. It's not there to hold your hand while you have an existential crisis.
SNORK!
"parents, carers and children out socialising (and socialising together)"
ReplyDeleteNOOOO! Socialising together is the worst kind of socialising!
She's a professional poker player: she has an excellent grip on hiding her emotions. I say this is all made up for her column.
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't she have them delivered to her own home, then her or her oh so sarcastically socially superior husband could take delivery and present them to the library in one go (assuming she had contacted the librarian earlier to confirm she could/would use them).
ReplyDeleteStick to poker or that really annoying TV quiz show, Vic.
Penseivat
Woman using the power of modern IT harnessed by free market capitalism to source, pay for and have directly delivered an unusual item that to source the old fashioned way (via a physical shop located on a street somewhere) would be very difficult if not impossible to achieve, complains about the system that allows her to do what she wants in the first place.
ReplyDeleteMore proof you can never please women I guess, and that logic is not their strong point either. Or that VC-M is a lying cow, because she knows full well about all this, but writes a column pretending she doesn't.
Poetic justice would require that she was charged for 2,500 mini-tambourines but they actually delivered 300 novelty salt cellars, and then when she complained they told her they were actually 50 tambourines after all, but she was too stupid to recognize what they were, or count properly, and even if she didn't like and went elsewhere, she'd still have to pay John Lewis for a Shopping License even if she only ever went to Asda.
ReplyDeleteI have to remember what an amusing writer Alan Coren was to try and overlook him landing us with not only Victoria but Giles as well.
ReplyDeleteNo 'Librarians' in this day and age would reduce themselves to perrforming a Rhymetime, they've got degrees nowadays.
ReplyDeleteIf this reduces V C-M to tears God knows what a real problem would do to her.
ReplyDelete"Socialising together is the worst kind of socialising!"
ReplyDeleteVictoria write English good..!
" I say this is all made up for her column."
I'd really hope so.
"...or that really annoying TV quiz show, Vic."
I've caught some of that - it's no 'Pointless', is it? Well, not in that sense, anyway.
"...and even if she didn't like and went elsewhere, she'd still have to pay John Lewis for a Shopping License even if she only ever went to Asda."
Heh!
"I have to remember what an amusing writer Alan Coren was to try and overlook him landing us with not only Victoria but Giles as well."
I guess talent really isn't inheritable after all.