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Candia Comes Clean

~ Candid cultural comments from the Isles of Wonder

Tag Archives: Camembert

Delayed Gratification

24 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by Candia in Humour, Poetry, Romance, Suttonford, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Agen, Armagnac, Bradford on Avon, Camembert, Dali clock, Fleury, FT Weekend, Lake Isle Innisfree, Screwpull, Shrink and Sage, tarte aux pruneaux, The Longs Arms, Winnie-the-Pooh, Yeats

Augustus Snodbury was cherishing his final few Saturdays before term

resumed. It had been an eventful summer, but he was a little concerned that

he might outstay his welcome at his erstwhile lover’s cottage in Bradford-on-

Avon.  References to guests and fish past their sell-by dates and the impact of

more than three day visits loomed on the horizon of that giant of a mind.

Ablutions had to be curtailed in the mornings as there was only one bathroom

and their daughter, Drusilla, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time on

waxing her moustache.

Snod had brought back several packets of his favourite Agen prunes from their

French foray. (I think he had also secreted some bottles of Armagnac, but to

our tale!)  Though an aid to digestion, not to mention that other bodily

function, whose initial letter is also ‘d’, the wizened fruit meant that, at times,

there was a degree of urgency as to access to the ablutional premises.  The ‘c’

word did not even come into it.  The efficacy of these little time bombs could

be cataclysmic, nay apocalyptic.

In spite of all that, Drusilla and her mother, Diana, had become increasingly

relaxed in his company and he had learned to resist asking them a series of

questions which he then mentally scored and graded.

The weather had been superb in England and they had taken to sitting outside

in the evening in the small courtyard at the rear of the cottage, surrounded by

tubs of lavender and Diana’s carefully dead-headed roses.

The French cheeses which they thought they had smuggled onto the coach,

but whose presence was fairly obvious to anyone with a normal olfactory

function, ripened in the kitchen, once they had been taken out of the fridge

and the bottle of red was breathing freely after Diana’s Screwpull had

performed its act of liberation.

A bee-endangered species?-landed on the lavender and took only what its

hive required and no more.  Snod began to silently word lines from The Lake

Isle of Innisfree by Yeats.  But one bee did not produce a glade, nor an

individual pot of honey.

Honey!  Wasn’t it Winnie the Poof- oops, a typo!-Pooh who had said that

although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment

just before you began which was even better than the activity itself?

Snod leant back on his chair.  It was HIS chair now, he felt  He picked up

Diana’s FT Weekend magazine and flicked through its pages in reverse.

There was her favourite article by The Shrink and The Sage.  He must read it

to discover what it was that so charmed her.  He could not believe what he

was reading.  It coincided with his interior monologue.

Snod had had time to reflect on his life, when he had stayed in the monastery

guest house at Fleury. He realised that he did not have to grab happiness in

the clumsy fashion he had attempted at The Longs Arms, earlier in the year.

After all, he had waited thirty odd years for moments such as this.  Why should

he become messily entangled in the lives of others?  Relationships could slowly

ripen like the Camembert which was dripping over the cheeseboard like a Dali

clock.

He took his first sip of wine, not having noticed its arrival on the cast iron

table. Diana came out of the back door, carrying a interesting looking flan.

I hope you don’t mind, Gus, but I made a tarte aux pruneaux with those Agens

that you left in the kitchen.

He resisted his initial irritation and decided to optimise his enjoyment:

Servez-vous, he replied and corrected himself by using the tu form almost

immediately.  Toi, he said.  Toi.  And it sounded very good.

And it tasted very good too.

Tarte au pruneau prête à déguster !

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Tesco Not So Express

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by Candia in Humour, Social Comment, Suttonford

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Anusol, Balm of Gilead, Balsam of Peru, Big issue, Camembert, Clubcard, customer service training, Dali, Derren Brown, Jacob's Creek, Johnson and Johnson, Tesco Express, Tucks

The woman on the till whose posture resembled a Dali (no, not a ‘deli’ )

melting Camembert said, Can I help? in the most desultory fashion, as if

she had been exhausted by days of customer service training.

Insert your Clubcard or select payment, ordered the annoyingly didactic voice

in the aisle next to mine.

Nothing would induce me to feed my items through a self-service scanner.

You can bet your bottom dollar, euro or pound that there will be a

malfunction provoked by the yellow reduced stickers anyway.

Then there will be no one to assist, as the next till will be busy with a

woman cashing in a wad of vouchers, or who feels like having an

argument over whether something qualifies for one of the said

vouchers.

The manager will have to be called, but he, or they will have to send

out a search party if it is during a break and you’ll have to wait till the

one in authority finishes their fag and comes in from an alleyway.

The only other assistant- overweight and not able to squeeze past the metal

trolley from which she is removing on their sell-by date items from shelves- will

become wedged in the narrow aisle and will require a call-out from the

emergency services.

Of course, you simply have to wait for a humanly-manned till.  (Is ‘manned‘ a

generic term?) (A humanely-manned till: even better!)

I arthritically heave my heavy basket onto the towering pile of wire

receptacles by the side of the till.  Why do they allow them to pile up?

The assistant proffers a plastic bag automatically.

No, don’t worry. I have a ‘Suttonford Decries Plastic’ hessian shopper,

I say smugly.  That means I can have a bag point.

Whether I gained one or not is a moot point.

Do you have a Clubcard?

Yes, it is on the credit card.

Please insert your card .  The assistant looks away in the obvious manner

that you were told to look in the mirror on your driving test.  But what about

the person behind you with Derren Brown eyes and advanced mind mapping

skills?

I quickly type my pin number and, of course, get one digit wrong.  Then I notice

that I have been charged for two goats’ cheeses at the full price, when the second

should have been half price. So, I query it. (Does it take more than one goat to

create one of those log things?  I need to know for the apostrophe.)

Oh, that’s only for the Luxury brand available at our main store in **.

She mentions a town fifty miles away.

Okay, I sigh.  Could you cancel that?  I don’t really want them anyway.

The woman on the till signals desperately to the shelf stacker. She

doesn’t respond.

 I’ll run and replace them on the shelf, I suggest helpfully.

The person behind swears under their breath.

I rush back, having gone round anti-clockwise to avoid being trapped

in the other aisle which is being re-stocked.

Do you collect school vouchers?

Flustered, I reply, No, I’ve got plenty of schools.  I take the wretched

tokens anyway.

Please scan your next item, says the scanner to the person who was

behind me and who has given up on personal service and switched

queues.

Would you like to continue?

Hold on, he says. I haven’t done the first one yet.

Please hold the line while we try to connect you.  The person you are

calling knows you are waiting.

Wait a minute. That’s not right, I think, as I pack everything into

the scratchy bag I made from the hair shirt I won for the martyrdom of

supermarket shopping.

Malfunction, says the scanner.  Item not recognised.

The vicar- for indeed it is he who has sworn, albeit softly- appeals to

the employee who had been processing my transaction, since she is

theoretically free now, though I haven’t quite packed all my items.

The scanner isn’t working.

Why doesn’t he anoint it with Extra Virgin and say a prayer?

What is it you tried to scan?  she says, looking as if she believes that

he has deliberately stopped it.  I think about Moses holding back The

Red Sea, or Joshua halting the progress of the sun.

Everyone in the queue looks over.

 

Anusol

 

Just this tube of Anusol.  He tries to brazen it out, but his red neck against

the white dog collar betrays his emotion.

There are two for the price of one at the moment and it wants to charge me

twice.

The assistant shouts, Alex!! This gentleman wants the special offer on the

Anusol!!!

It’s only on the 800g ones, Alex says triumphantly.  And we don’t have those

at this branch.

Everyone is quite involved by now. The manager comes over, reeking of

cigarette smoke and looking puzzled, as if wondering why anyone would

want two tubes of aforementioned item for one orifice.

I lift my bag and the hemp handles gave way, decanting a bottle of Jacob’s

Creek onto the floor.  So much for trying to save the planet.  I hope they

will recycle the glass.

Do you want to continue? repeats the scanner ad nauseam.

No, I’ve lost the will to live, I hiss, even though I am not the addressee.

I accept a plastic bag after all and have my green point deducted.

I stumble through the, thankfully, automatic glass door and straight into

a well-wrapped up figure, strategically blocking the exit.

Big Issue?

No thanks, I say, shoving some school vouchers into his gloved hand.

Anything to get out of here.

Actually, that’s a lot of Anusol, I think, on my way home.  He must

get through a lot. Maybe I should look into Johnson and Johnson’s share

price and get rid of Tesco from my ISA.  Maybe the vicar is in the know,

or maybe he has just confused Balm of Gilead with Balsam of Peru, which

I understand is a constituent ingredient.

No, I am not revealing how I know that.  I just like reading packets.

Honest.

They call it Tucks in the USA.

Why?

 

 

 

 

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My name is Candia. Its initial consonant alliterates with “cow” and there are connotations with the adjective “candid.” I started writing this blog in the summer of 2012 and focused on satire at the start.

Interspersed was ironic news comment, reviews and poetry.

Over the years I have won some international poetry competitions and have published in reputable small presses, as well as reviewing and reading alongside well- established poets. I wrote under my own name then, but Candia has taken me over as an online persona. Having brought out a serious anthology last year called 'Its Own Place' which features poetry of an epiphanal nature, I was able to take part in an Arts and Spirituality series of lectures in Winchester in 2016.

Lately I have been experimenting with boussekusekeika, sestinas, rhyme royale, villanelles and other forms. I am exploring Japanese themes at the moment, my interest having been re-ignited by the recent re-evaluations of Hokusai.

Thank you to all my committed followers whose loyalty has encouraged me to keep writing. It has been exciting to meet some of you in the flesh- in venues as far flung as Melbourne and Sydney!

Copyright Notice

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Candia Dixon Stuart and candiacomesclean.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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