Friday 6 March 2020

On a Crowded Car Park and a Little Lesson.

There was something of a scramble for parking spaces at Sainsbury’s, Ashbourne this morning. I was informed that it was all due to a rush of panic buying in response to the coronavirus issue. It appears that an awful lot of people fear they will either be confined to a sick bed and risk dying of starvation even if the plague doesn’t take them, or maybe that Ashbourne will declare self-isolation as the Derbyshire village of Eyam famously did 350 years ago. Thankfully, there was neither queue nor shortage in the coffee shop.

The lady in the coffee shop asked me what I wanted, and I replied that I would have my usual coffee and a lemon curd tart. Only I didn’t call it a lemon curd tart; I called it a lemon turd cart. I was in that kind of mood.

She paused and looked at me questioningly, and so I had to tell her what I knew of the Rev Spooner and his curious speech habits. She now knows what a spoonerism is. That was today’s contribution to the cause of improving the human condition. Sometimes life is easy, and sometimes it isn’t.

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