Friday 29 May 2015

In Glastonbury Town...

When we come to Somerset we stay very near Glastonbury... where The Old Man be very impressed by the Biggest Veggie/Organic Supermarket he have ever seen. And this time he is also gob-smacked by a street musician playing a Hurdy Gurdy with great vigour and skill, so that he do actually give him some money.

We do live in West Cornwall .... where I am used to concepts taking over towns and hollowing them out from the inside. (I speak of St. Ives of course, that Barnum & Bailey Circus of the Fine Arts, where every other shop is a "Gallery" and you cannot move for Art and all Things Artistic.) .... Glastonbury now has a similar relationship with Spirituality.... I do not mind greatly. I have woo-wooed a plenty in my time. And, after the prevalence of Art in Cornwall, I find it refreshing to walk down a high street and be faced with an approaching gentleman ambling along in full dhoti and turban. This be after noticing a white-dressed lady peering (somewhat grumpily) out of a shop window which is festooned with golden pyramidal structures - the "Buddha Maitreya Soul Therapy Centre", no less. The Old Man has noticed however that the crystal shops and woo-woo centres on the High Street have increased since our visit three years ago. He no longer can find WH Smiths for his newspaper and have to hunt out a paper from a corner shop down a side street.

So it be that, tired and bewildered on the day of The Funeral, we fill a shopping basket in the Organic Supermarket and...The Old Man clutching as many Cheddar Strawberries as he can manage... we approach the tills to pay.
Bewildered by the loose arrangement of chatting people, The Old Man do ask:
"Is this the queue?"
"Does this look like a queue?" says a gentleman I shall call Mr Philosopher.
"???" say we.
"Your consciousness should bring awareness of those who are here before you." says Mr Enlightened, a young man with a "rasta do" to rival an Indian fakir.
Abashed, we do slide in front of a till... now philosophically unsure of  the existence of queuing whilst simultaneously worrying that we have destroyed its essential organic process.

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