Dear LPG

We, the English are famous for our queues but it appears that the time we spend in them is one of the things that everyone is bent on minimising more and more these days.  I suspect that, like many LPG readers, I am so old that I can remember the 1950s and 1960s when a trip to get a few things from the shop was something that we would do nearly every day.  

I was around so far back that when I walked into what was then considered a fair sized grocery shop, everything was displayed behind the counter and I was quite used to waiting in a queue until I got to the front when the shop assistant would get what was wanted from the shelves, weigh it and package it and then tally the bill for me.

But then came the computerised high-street shopping experience, where the shop counter became the checkout and we gradually learned how not to ask about what we were buying.   Shopping in store became more of a solitary occupation where the emphasis was more of a DIY practise.  Then, as time went by, while you were standing there, there would be all the visual posters reminding you about all the things that were on offer and, gradually, the visual reminders to buy became audio as well with the introduction of the loud-hailers that are there these days.  They have become quite invaluable.

The calming shopping music seems to have gone out of fashion unless you are in one of those shops that offers their own radio station running in the background.  They tell you about all the offers in store and, of course, there are the staff-announcements that are now so common that we hardly notice when an additional member of staff is called to the till or you are asked to move to another one.

Over the years, we have gradually been getting used to even more do it yourself living as we use our store, debit and credit cards to ‘touch’ our way through the paying for what we have bought routine without even having to find any cash at all, but the other day I found myself browsing the isles while listening to a message I have not heard for a while. 

The shop’s audio message informed that the computers had all gone down and they could only accept cash payments.  It was interesting to see how many people in the shop, dropped their shopping baskets and turned towards the exit because we shoppers have so much less of that commodity to hand these days.  Luckily, I remembered an emergency tenner in the back of my purse although yet another audio announcement very quickly broadcast that the problem was solved by the time I got to the checkout.

The incident reminded me of the early computer-influenced High Street shopping days when, if the tills went down you would see all the customers standing outside the entrance of the shop waiting for the problems to be fixed.  

We are all so used to the gadgets around us, and taking them for granted, that it is only when they go wrong that we really notice just how much we depend on them.  

I suppose it is still worth having a bit of old fashioned cash in your pocket 

CS, Southwark.