Avoiding Ungentlemanly Conduct.

Ashbourne Sainsbury’s has a narrow covered area running down one side of the building from the main entrance towards the car park. (Just to give you an idea of what I mean: If it was a mediaeval monastery, you’d probably call it a cloister. But it isn’t, so I don’t know what the correct term is.)

Anyway, narrow it is, and they make it even narrower by having two rows of trolleys parked up against the wall. This means that if two people are trying to walk in opposite directions, one of them has to make a detour out into the uncovered area beyond.

The person coming the other way today was a young woman and I’m nothing if not a gentleman, so when I came to a gap in the ‘pillars’ I steered the trolley out to make the detour. But she moved to make the detour first, which rankled a bit.

‘I was going out there,’ I muttered, my rankled, gentlemanly sensibility probably evident from a furrowed brow.

She smiled in return and said nothing, which was probably just as well because what she should have said was ‘age before beauty.’ And if she had said that, I would have felt compelled by an impish nature to offer Dorothy Parker’s classic riposte: ‘pearls before swine.’ And that wouldn’t have been polite, would it?

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And I might just mention that I so like the sight of the low westering sun backlighting the mist rising off the river in the valley. It makes the far hills look even prettier, and that was what it was doing ten minutes ago.