Post #55

Worth the wait?

19th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (1)

George Bush may be visiting Great Britain at the moment, but his was not the most eagerly awaited arrival in this land. In the western boroughs of Edinburgh a year-defining moment has finally arrived, and with it comes blessed relief for thousands of poor souls throughout the country.

What, you may ask, could possibly be happening? Is the Pope embarking on one last tour of the highlands? Are the company that make those hemroid cushions distributing free samples to the Scots? No. Nothing so trivial. The moment I speak of, proudly announced on page 13 of the Edinburgh Evening News, and all-consuming in the lives of the Edinburgh elderly, is the opening of the new ASDA store near my Gran’s house.

Pah! you say. Who cares!? you cry. Well, I’ll tell you who cares — my mother. My mother, and every other person unlucky enough to have an elderly Scottish relative for whom the closing of the Old ASDA (and its coffee shop) and the opening of the New ASDA (and its McDonalds) has been the only event worth discussing for neigh on nine months now.

Daily phone calls have developed in to such a familiar pattern that each morning, as my mother speaks to my Gran, NASA tune in to test the accuracy of their cyclic measurement devices. The success of the space program for the next ten years has hinged on my Gran forgetting what she told us the day before and repeating it again, word for word, day after day.

But all that’s over now — the store has opened, and, to the surprise of every pensioner in Edinburgh, it continues to sell the same goods as the old one (fancy that): They sell the same bread, and those biscuits with the bits in and you can buy your beans there as well which is good for Joan, because she’s always been partial to beans and she was so worried maybe they’d stop selling them and then what would she do?…

What indeed.

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