This Is This

I was out in my lunch break because I wanted to buy one of those digital photo frames for my folks. You know, the kind that never stay still and tell stories of different places and people? Maybe your folks are the same.

I tried Boots and the Snappy Snaps (”Can I please order the thing that will put you out of business?”) and wandered down to HMV, where you’d think a place that sells PlayStations and USB whosenames might sell digital photo frames.

Well, that was my notion when I approached the sales assistant, a man in his mid-twenties refilling the video rack, and asked him this:

Do you sell digital photo frames?

The man looked at me, then stared blankly in the direction of Country and World, then widened his eyes and puffed out his cheeks in comic bewilderment. If I could have seen into his, I think there would have been a flickering bare bulb battered by a frantic moth.

Something happened, because seemed to regain his composure and said, “Frames. We do, yes. Over here I think.”

I’m not sure he thought anywhere, by the looks of it, but he led me a box of poster frames.

“Sorry,” I said like I do when it’s not needed, “I meant digital ones. You know, computer files. Like jaypegs?”

“Oh right,” he said as the previous expression returned, followed by:

“Crikey.”

You don’t get much crikey these days, or when you do it’s not from someone under sixty. It was like stepping into an Ealing comedy or the music hall or something.

I liked it. I was better than coming out empty-handed.

Also on This Is This
Don’t they know millions of people are watching? What in the name of General Robert E. Lee are these people playing at?
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 7:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.