Where are the sharp things and the heavy things, handheld with cross threaded attachments? The electric instruments of the heart and the additives of tenderness?
When she, the insouciant DIY assistant, held me in her arms and explained where to find a grouting trowel, I fell. Now, back in my storeroom, I arrange the useful items upon the shelves and fastened various hooks to arrange and repeat the exquisite experience. If she saw my workshop she would understand.
In the interim I returned some items to the scene, hoping that we might cross paths once more. But when I sauntered causally down the hardware aisle, I saw him laughing with the other assistants and became afraid. Instead, I danced in the space between the tile display and the rows of empty showers, I danced until my decisions became irrelevant and my footprints left traces in the dust by the bags of plaster, because the first one that you choose always has a suspicious tear in the multilayered protection.
In the supermarket, she was loading the shelves, making sure that all the labels coalesced and there were no unsightly gaps. I pretended that I needed something on the shelf behind her stack of boxes, but I was fooling no one, and had to retreat with a ready meal that I didn’t want. In the gardening section, behind the majestic sliding doors, he waited for me with patient eyes, explaining that each plant had a name. The plants then gathered around my feet, desperate to be taken into benevolent custody, looking up at me with puppy dog leaves.
When she folded and held out the curling receipt to me, looked me in the eye and said, Thank you, before turning to the next contestant, my knees buckled and I fell to the floor, oranges spilling from an unfastened recyclable bag. The local children helped me gather them and lined the fruit up on top of a wall in the car park, for target practise.
When he took away my empty trolley and added it expertly to the curving line, he looked powerful and in control, guiding the trolley snake perfectly between the obstacles. If necessary, he could take care of us all and lift us up. One day I could be like him.
As soon as I got home I shook out all the pieces of cardboard packaging, each one cut precisely by a wonderful machine, I laid them side by side on the kitchen. My sense of wonder was profound, and I could not throw them away, so I ate the ready meal although I wasn’t hungry.
The multi-purpose tool that I had won shone like the sun, rays of light catching its hexagonal shaft, the textured grip stood proud and inviting, whereas my tools were rusted, dull, rounded at the corners and blunt, their sentimental value in question.
Surely this world of useful things will fill our hearts with a joy, the like of which. Surely my coffee experience will bewilder my senses and quieten my needy mind. I have been educated and trained to a high level in the art of contactless payment. Now that I may command goods from across the world from my very living room, will I then miss the gentle eyes of the caring assistants? Who are so hard to find, as they clinically assess my level of incompetence.
And when you find her, she may look the other way for some considerable time, fully involved in some arcane manoeuvre. Will you take it personally and lose your courage or push through and brazenly ask the directions to the aisle of electrical jewelry, strangely always number 28.
Will you make yourself vulnerable to the unlikely security guard and download the loyalty app which promises so much? Only to break your heart once more with its inconsequential chit chat.
The Guardians of the Cave 