Not tartan paint, not elbow grease, but equally obscure

By Roddy Phillips

Published:

I FELT like a naïve apprentice who had been sent to the stores for a tin of tartan paint and a jar of elbow grease. The young sales assistant was rubbing her chin over the message list my wife had written and it wasn’t looking good. The note was passed to a colleague, who read it with an equally baffled look.

“Are you sure it’s written down properly?” asked the first assistant.

I took the note and read it again, but it hadn’t changed since I last looked at it.

“Somebody pulling your leg, perhaps,” suggested the second sales assistant.

By a strange coincidence a colleague told me recently how on his first day on a student summer job in that very department store he was given a sheet of sandpaper and directed to the storage area in the basement. There, he was told he would find other new recruits who were already busy sanding down the nipples on some newly-arrived mannequins, which had been deemed too eye-catching for public display.

Thinking it was a wind-up, he went about his business until his manager took him to task for dereliction of duty and he was marched down to the basement to join the sweating army of hard-at-it mannequin-nipple sanders.

He said it was a peculiar, surreal experience that haunted him to this day, made worse by the fact that everyone was taking it so seriously.

On my way out of the store, I couldn’t help noticing how much times had changed in the mannequin-realism department. However, I think you know you’re in trouble when you start fancying mannequins.

It was time to do what I always do when I have a note from my wife in my hand – call her up and annoy her about it.

“What do you mean is it a wind up?” she asked, as I explained how I had tried two stores and the sales assistants all reckoned I’d been sent for something that didn’t exist.

“For goodness sake,” sighed my wife, “next time put them on the phone and I’ll speak to them.”

Apparently, I could also consider myself sacked as general shopping dogsbody, which is a real shame because I love traipsing round town trying to buy stuff that doesn’t exist. In fact, I love a wild-goose chase, particularly of a lunchtime, it saves me having to buy food and eat it.

I decided that the next store would be the last. It took me some time to get the attention of an assistant, since most of them were so elusive I couldn’t trap one long enough to get my question out.

Eventually, I ambushed one who was pretending to do something very important with quilt covers, so important that she was emitting an invisible “do not disturb” force field that most shoppers wouldn’t have dared penetrate.

“Excuse me,” I said boldly, “do you work in this department?”

Shop assistants hate open-ended threatening questions, so she was immediately on her guard and stared back at me with startled indignation as if I was about to mug her.

“Can you tell me if you sell housewife pillowcases?” I asked.

A middle-aged retail veteran, the woman rallied quickly and threw me an artificial smile as she read the note I was holding up.

“I’m afraid we don’t call them housewife pillowcases any more, sir,” she said, “we call them standard pillowcases.”

I thought about this for a moment and saw before me a whole world of possible traps that would have to be negotiated.

“Let me get this straight: you have heard of housewife pillowcases, but what was once housewife is now called standard, is that right?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” replied the assistant.

“Is that because it’s politically correct?” I asked.

“In what respect?” asked the assistant, looking at me suspiciously.

“Well, if my mother was alive today would she be known as a ‘standard’ rather than a housewife?” I asked matter of factly, then added, “she also had a full-time job, so she probably wasn’t a full-time standard.”

I could see the assistant thinking to herself: “This is why I purposefully tweak quilts all day, so I don’t have to deal with nutters like this.”

“Shouldn’t they be called houseperson pillowcases, or person pillowcases, which has a better ring to it?” I continued.

Meanwhile, I was calling my wife.

“Would you mind explaining all this standard housewife thing to my wife,” I said and handed the assistant the phone, which she took somewhat reluctantly as if it had just been retrieved from a drain.

There followed the same conversation I had just had with the assistant.

“That’s right,” continued the assistant, “it’s a standard; no it’s not politically incorrect; a person pillowcase, not really . . .”

Interestingly, despite this challenging situation, the assistant found time to do a bit of sneaky quilt-cover tweaking on the side.

Meanwhile, in the distance, I spotted the giant-TV department and since the assistant and my wife seemed to be getting on so well, I started edging towards it.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the assistant, “your wife says you’re not getting a giant plasma-screen TV.”

For a moment, she looked sorry for me.

I did get two crisp, white, standard pillowcases, though, which was a boost.

When the assistant produced them, you would have thought I’d just bought the Turin Shroud. One of them was pulled lovingly out of its wrapping for my inspection. I held it up to the light and peered at it for a few moments, then pressed it to the right side of my face.

“Feels nice and standard to me,” I announced.

The assistant was smiling, but her eyes had wandered longingly back to the comfort zone of the quilt covers where she could imagine the long afternoon folding itself away in front of her, gently and serenely.