stationery

And then, of course, I find myself in exactly one of those weirdly-wonderful ordinary situations. In a stationers in Newtown. Where paper is piled so high, and in such a disorganized way, yellowing and dusty, that it is almost impossible to enter the shop and even harder to find a person of whom to make enquiries. The shop actually contains two men, one tall, gaunt and grumpy who sits at the till, but does not know the price of anything, and doesn't really want to serve you. And then from the back, a very elderly and rather short and plump gentleman, who started to serve me ( plastic sleeves for photographs to sell - a whole other story) but then gets distracted for a considerable amount of time with ordering ever more paper and supplies over the phone.

It took him at least 10 minutes to find the items I was after, involving a lot of shifting of mainly derelict pieces of machinery at the back of the store, and much tottering under heavy boxes. And then, of course, the sleeves were incredibly cheap and in the meantime we had a very long, interesting conversation about printing inks.