Have a nice day!

I have begun to notice a new trend. Shop assistants talking to me when I am at the till making my purchase.

I don't mean the shop assistant handling the normal purchaser / vendor administration. I am not referring to the regular angry guy behind till at my local corner shop who talks to me and has called me by name ever since he read my name off my credit card. He is called Neil, and I can tell you this because he wears a name badge - so we are on an equal footing.

No - it is shop assistants in high street stores who I have not seen before and likely will not see again are taking an interest in my day and what I am buying.

"Have you found what you wanted?"
"Oh, that is a great purchase - I think that will look great on you"

Is this a thing now?

Surely my standing at the till with the product is tantamount proof of me finding at least something I want and, by simple deduction, I am willing to pay for it means I deem it likable enough to be also willingly seen in. Really, by this stage of my retail experience, I don't want your opinion. I don't mean to offend you, but I am not sure I should trust your view on my purchase - partly because you have vested interests in my making of the purchase and partly because your taste, ethics and morality - outwith this, you have to admit, slim scenario that's all I have to base your opinion on - may turn out to be something I do not want to associate my trust with.

It is not that I am not personable when paying. I'd choose an assistant to a self-service system any time. I am always sure to smile, say please and thank you and wish them a good day when I leave. I make sure I am pleasant and will try and talk about the weather or ask if they are having a busy day if I can. I certainly want to be a friendly, amicable and happy customer at all times.

But it is the specific questioning and commenting of the things I am buying that I find, well, off-putting.

For example:

I bought a music CD recently and the shop assistant behind the till asked if I had found everything I had been looking for. In order to not get into any philosophical debate about the individual human condition and our absolute need to never truly find what we are looking for being the main reason we can further ourselves and why some of us end up astronauts, I thought it best to say "yes, thanks".

"Oh, I love that album." he actually went on! "It is much more consistent than his debut and you can tell he has become more musically proficient in his melodies". Really? Well I enjoyed the rather more bedroom production of his.... This is isn't CD club! This isn't even that independent record shop in High Fidelity. This is a 25 second transaction of goods and profit at a chain store. I don't overly care about your validation of the music I am buying and, quite honestly, thanks to your review you have sucked the rock and roll thrill of it all. I pretty much hold you responsible for the death of the physical album.

Only this week I was in a high street brand clothes shop. The girl at the Pay counter said: "Did you find everything you wanted today?" and I was forced to admit it was. Yes thanks, what I have lain down before you and your bar code gun is "everything I had wanted today", I got out of my flat from the solitary motivation to buy 3 identical pairs of charcoal coloured trousers for work. That is the state of my life right now.

As she then continued! "I want to spend my money today on clothes once I finish my shift but with March coming up so quickly I shouldn't. It's hard not to buy something for the weekend though, but I have a lot of things going on in March, I probably should be good and save my wage. It's funny how birthdays and events all happen in one month like that, isn't it?"

Positively mind blowing. A real phenomenon of the cosmos.

It wasn't so much her conversation (I replied to her that she was right, it was a difficult situation) but that throughout it she was idly stroking and repeatedly smoothing out my work trousers laid out in front of her at the upper thigh. I couldn't get out my mind as I watched her hands that we were only a single quantum paradigm shift in the multi-verse from her sexually assaulting me.

I struggle to look at those trousers straight in the eye now. Knowing. She's been there.

Jeezus, don't these shop assistants think of the consequences?

Yesterday I was out in town to buy a birthday present for a baby. I went to the baby shop. I looked round for a bit and found exactly what I was after. A baby wetsuit.

At the pay counter the girl asked me if I had found everything I was after in the shop. Confidently I said: "Yes, thanks".

She kept talking! She was telling me how good the baby wetsuit was for babies.

I thought, I haven't a clue - I don't have a baby. I just picked up the same one from the photo I was given. But I thought, be polite and agree. It'll be quicker this way. Besides, it is probably better because I'll appear less weird if I pretend I have one. So I nodded and said this was what "we" thought.

Then she kept talking... "So is this for his first swimming class?" she asked through a sweet smile, looking at the baby wetsuit.

I hadn't been expecting this. I had not counted on it at all. A third question about what I was buying! I was plunged into unknown shop assistant small talk territory and at the worst moment: in a baby shop where I was pretending I had a baby.

I didn't really want to get into the whole buying a birthday present for someone else's baby at this point in case she felt I had initially led her to believe otherwise. Which I sort of had. Changing my story would not be good. It would make me seem almost certainly suspicious. And so I figured I would simply tell her the facts without mentioning they were about my friend's young son.

I explained he had been swimming for a few months. He enjoyed it. He is getting into all sorts of things at home, too. He has been getting a little help onto his feet, but is quite capable once up of getting to places he wants to and really he shouldn't. Why do little ones, do that? Go towards the most dangerous things in any room. It's a wonder we have survived as a species.

She giggled.

"So what's his name?"

When would this chip and PIN interrogation stop?? I told her his name. No last name. If angry Neil has taught me anything, it is my name can be seen on my credit card.

"They are great when they are this age, aren't they? Trying out the swimming and things. It is good for them to start early."

Right I thought, I am in deep cover. Maybe too deep. If I slip up and she finds out I don't have a baby, not only will this appear now extremely suspicious that I am buying a baby wetsuit, but I bet she won't believe the birthday present reason now either. And then I am basically back where I started: I am a man buying a baby wetsuit when I don't have a baby. Only now with added "pretended he had a baby" blown cover story baggage.

I concurred. Yes. I... erm... suppose it is.

This was tense. More tense than shopping ought to be.

Thankfully, the girl didn't expose my rouse and I left the shop dignity intact. And on his birthday, the little guy got his wetsuit with a cartoon whale on it.

In hindsight I should have just told her the truth from the moment I walked in. I have no baby. I want a baby wetsuit. It is a birthday present. In fact, it would be much easier if we all did this going into every high street shop.

As soon as we walk into a shop go to the pay counter and tell them what we want, why we want it and tell them we are delighted they approve of what we want and where we would like the receipt once we come back to them in 10 minutes to buy it.

Yes, it would be much easier all round.

Next time you hear the beep...

Round where I live there is a local, well organised and commendably mobile campaign group against a recently proposed un-named large supermarket operative building one of their large supermarket operations on some wasteground nearby.

I, too, am against a supermarket being installed. Not that I am for having a large wasteground either. Each summer, travelling amusements come and set up there, not looking out of place on an episode of Scooby-Do. I went to it a few summer's ago and, having fully wandered around the site, got on the ride that looked the most health and safety certified [that basically boiled down to not one being controlled by a man wearing a lumberjack shirt]. The very next day the local press reported that someone had died on it. They were thrown from the cup and saucer into the central pivot shaped like a teapot. Such was the velocity, they were killed instantly. What a way to go. That is a true story.

Although a supermarket would turn the wasteground into something that does not attract funfairs, I am against one being put on it. Because the less reasons to have old people in supermarkets the better.

I was in a supermarket this week. I only had a couple of items in the basket: processed ham, 4 rolls and that. Enough to keep me going for a day but really - looking down at the basket - it was giving me a feeling that, having gone to all the effort of going to the Supermarket in the first place, I should have got more, you know? Having that idea, waiting in the queue, that I should have made a list - and that idea was tinged with the feeling of regret. Anyway, that was the point where I was at - waiting in the queue at the checkout.

"Please put the item in the bag"

As I say, I only had a few items. Up to this point, I had scouted a few checkout queues. Many had trolley-fulls to get through and the "10 items or less" kiosk was way off at the far end with a queue for it well up the refrigerated aisle. As luck would have it, I settled on standing behind a little old lady, who had just unloaded her basket of tinned fruit, half-pint of milk, a couple of long vegetables and a half-loaf of bread on the conveyor belt. I stood behind her as she watched the checkout girl put through her shopping. And I stood behind her as she started to tell the checkout girl about how she bought a scarf for the winter the other day. Oh, what a lovely scarf it is too. Really thick and warm. It is sort of blue and green. The only problem with it is it is made of that hairy type of wool and it caught on a necklace and broke the chain. Anyway it was really lucky because someone saw it fall off, they were sitting behind at another table, otherwise the necklace would have...

Sorry, excuse me, apologies for interrupting. I am not one for using foul and abusive language. Especially so when talking to an older person but JEEZUS F**K! If you want to talk about "things" then go to your local grocer! Some of us just want to have the briefest of faceless transactions of money for goods - that's why we are here, now, in the Supermarket - all this, all this around you is the future and the future doesn't want to hear a meandering tale about buying a winter garment and if you can't cope then it's time for you to shop at various "mongers".

I know, I know. If I wanted a truly inhuman supermarket experience then I could have gone to one of those "self-checkouts". But I don't trust them. I am pretty certain that is how the cylons started on Caprica.

And then we got to the crux. I saw her give a wrinkly grin to the girl at the checkout when she said, "That is £4.45, please" and we both knew just what was coming next. "I"ll see if I have the exact money for you, love". 3 minutes later, having rummaged through the penny purse (twice) - "I don't have the 5p. I'll have to give you a fiver".

Three words: Chip and Pin! You are not at Sandra's Fish Van anymore! The supermarket, literally, has bags of change.

Having got through the adventure story of the hairy scarf, the Orwellian drama of the change purse the little old person then started to pack her carrier bag. Taking another age to open it as her fingers were so old that her fingerprints had completely smoothed out. She was totally frictionless. "I am sorry for holding you up, son" she offered up while the plastic bag slipped out between her palms.

"It's absolutely fine, I'm in no hurry. And I hope you won't need that scarf too much this winter!" I waspishly retorted through a warm smile of frustrated incredulity.

Of course, not all old people should be tarred by the same brush. Other old souls distrust the supermarket even while in it [which makes you think they got lost, you know, because they are so terribly old], complaining about the problem they are simultaneously compounding. They talk of the supermarket killing the old fashioned, small and friendly shops on the main street, while pushing a trolley full of multi-pack Seabrook Sea-salt crisps and frozen pies.

I have heard a china cabinet of old people [for that is the collective noun] in the cleaning and detergents aisle, as I have gone by, stating their disgusted at there being too many cleaning products on the shelf. I have heard one of them, as I mosey on through, insist on getting bread from the storeroom because he knows "for a fact, the fresh stuff is kept off the shelves so customers can't buy it". Yes, because that is basically what supermarket economics is, keeping a whole load of fresh produce out of sight until it goes a bit stale and then put it out onto the shelf. And then they laugh at you buying it. Oh how the supermarket laughs. You lunatic.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying, particularly, a ban on old folk from supermarket shopping is the direction to take. I am just suggesting that supermarkets are established up a mild gradient. As a deterent. So, I believe, the case made is clear. No to more supermarkets. Yes to the local market. That way, the older generation can be happy getting soap measured out on scales and meat from jars sealed in petroleum jelly [or however these local shops work] and chatting about the time of day to a lady who doesn't have a name badge - while I am able to purchase my processed ham, 4 rolls and that, relatively hassle free.

One may argue that I could simply adopt an online supermarket delivery shopping habit. This would mean I would have needed no vested opinion about old people in supermarkets in first place. And that would be a valid comment. But I know for a fact that supermarkets regularly substitute the bottle of fizzy juice you clicked on with a bottle of carbonated juice that is going flat, then leave the crate, ring your doorbell and run away.