It is a simple plan. I need two new king-sized Egyptian cotton sheets for the upcoming visit of my old college friends. So I drive from Westport to Castlebar, through the new N5 roundabout, which happily still hadn’t opened its exit to Turlough and the wider world beyond Co Mayo, thus assuaging my anxieties about pesky protocols regarding lanes and exits.
It is shortly after 9am, so finding a car-parking space is easy and, being an experienced user of contactless payments machines, I proceed to divest myself remotely of €1. I derive childlike pleasure from watching the image of this debit going back and forth on the screen.
I am sitting back in my car, depositing my ticket and gathering my accoutrements, when I see another woman of my vintage looking confused, then distressed, at the said parking machine.
She returns to her car, rummages around and goes back to the machine once again. This time she puts her hands up in the air in frustration, and during the gesture, spots me observing her.
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“Good morning,” she says, through my window. “Wondering have you paid for your parking?”
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“Yes, just now,” I reply, getting out of the car.
“It says it allows coins and cards but it won’t accept the coins.”
“Okay. Maybe I can help.”
You can’t expect guests to dry their hands with material that has been washed so often it feels like sandpaper
So we two women with white hair and childhood memories of ten shilling notes and half-crowns, halfpennies and farthings, try in vain to shove a €1 coin into the indicated slot.
“I’m afraid, it appears that you’ll have to use your card on the contactless option,” I said.
“But I don’t have a card. Myself and my husband are cash people.”
“Oh! dear. Okay, I’ll get my card from the car and pay for you.”
I return to the car and pull my debit card out of my purse. “Thank you so much,” she says. “All these new ways of paying for things are very stressful. Why give the option, if it isn’t available?”
“Exactly, bloody ridiculous.”
“Here, take this euro then,” she adds shoving the coin into my hand.
Minutes later, we are two happy cailíní heading across the car park to two different chainstores.
Not only do I find the king-sized Egyptian cotton sheets for my college friends’ weekend visit, but I can’t resist the rainbow patterns on the new summer towel range. “These towels are so soft,” I whisper loudly to myself, hugging one to my face as if it was a newborn baby. “And you can’t expect guests to dry their hands with material that has been washed so often it feels like sandpaper,” I continue, to no one.
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I smile at another shopper, who is staring at me.
“Time to pay,” I say, and I scarper off towards the queue.
It isn’t until the assistant has totted up everything, put my purchases into a carrier bag and asks if it is “cash or card”, that something hits the fan.
The hazard lights. What the hell are the hazard lights on for? Oh no. My mind is in overdrive
I open my handbag to extract my purse and after several rummages come up with nothing other than two loose acid reflux tablets. “My purse is missing, I say,” flushed and on the verge of hysteria.
The assistant smiles benignly.
“Has there been a spate of thefts here lately?”
He looks back at me blankly, but still benignly.
“Okay, will you put my shopping aside and I’ll run back to my car to check if it is there?”
“Of course.”
My heart is racing as I trot across two car parks looking like a demented banshee.
When my little Renault Clio comes into view, I see that it is winking at me.
The hazard lights. What the hell are the hazard lights on for? Oh no. My mind is in overdrive. I’m thinking that I left my purse on the passenger seat after I took it out of my bag to assist the woman who only had coins, and some deviant passerby spotted it, broke my front passenger window, and stole my purse.
However, there is no shattered glass awaiting me, or, indeed, an empty front passenger seat. Instead, my car is just as I left it, unlocked and with my purse totally intact.
God be with the days when you’d take a donkey and cart into town, armed with a ten shilling note and your rosary beads.
