Tuesday morning was taken up with a tutors' team meeting to review and finalise student reports for all who are not being ordained in two months from now. With a funeral to prepare for this coming Friday, I made a home visit to the widow and her daughter in Radyr after lunch, then went home to clean the house ready for Clare's return. She stayed on in Geneva an extra day to visit former colleagues at the Geneva Steiner school. After tea together, I headed back to College for a tutor group bible study on the first chapter of 1 Peter. Then an hour's Chi Gung class before supper. Sara sent me a picture of a Valborg bonfire from Gothenberg - Valpurgisnacht - auf Deutsch, a half year away from Hallowe'en. My how the seasons pass.
I spent this morning preparing Friday's funeral and Julia's dad's funeral, set to take place at St Mary's in Whitchurch ten days from now. After a day of leaving messages on each other's answering machines I finally had a conversation with Canon John Rowlands the Rector to arrange the details. Satisfied that all is now in place, I headed into town for an afternoon in the CBS office designing information leaflets on night services available to people in the city centre to circulate to security radio users. The new Admiral office tower next door to Motorpoint is growing nicely, as you can see from this photo.
On my way there, I went into Curry's digital in Grand Arcade, as I often do, to see if there's anything new of interest on offer. In just a few minutes I was accosted four times by sales staff asking me "Are you alright?" Finally, in sheer annoyance I rounded on one of them and said: "What's the matter? Do I look ill?", which rather took him aback. They don't seem to be trained to ask: "Can I help you?", and all habitually use this annoying casual colloquialism with a double meaning. Sure, "Can I help you?" may well evoke the response: "No, I'm alright." but that's no reason to ask "Are you alright?" given the rich communications potential of the English language. I tweeted my annoyance, and was somewhat amused to elicit a response from @curryspcworld.
There are huge cultural gaps in the use of English across the generations, and social classes, and no longer a consensual social protocol for interaction in the public realm, as there seems to be in the use of European languages which use old conventions more so than is done in English. The aim on the part of retail workers is to be friendly and put customers at their ease, but there seems to be little understanding of how to make space, either physically or mentally to consider the product in situ. Perhaps the staff just don't have enough to do to keep them from mobbing customers.
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