You Must Be From Away

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…to the merely ridiculous” is what Bill Leslie would have said.

Walking past Daniela Diehl, a flash boutique in Mainz’s Altstadt, and Mrs jb spies a pair of purple shoes.

“Oh” she says ” I like THOSE! You’ve got your glasses on – how much are they”

“200 reduced to 120 reduced to 39”

“And which size”

“39” I say “How cool is that? Do the size 38s cost €38 or what?”

To no-one in particular.

Mrs jb’s already in the shop, trying them on.

I drift in and mumble something about people with large feet being marginalised, because size 40 would cost €40.

Blank look from the salesgirlalmostpensioner and a sympathetic “I see that it’s your turn to take the village idiot shopping” glance towards Mrs jb.

“So that’s €120, but you can have them for €100”

Penny drops.

My fault of course and we haven’t really saved €161 (which we would have spent immediately on some other fashion item), we’ve only saved €100.

So I’ve somehow lost €61 along the way.

Typical

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Or: a valid reason for not supporting local merchants.

I tend to buy generic stuff via the web – books, records CDs, T-shirts.

With other stuff, I figure that you should support local people.

I’ve changed my mind.

My barista course taught me that I need a coffee grinder.

So I ask the guy at the place where we buy our coffee which model’s best for our purposes.


Demoka M207. Best on the market. Grinds the coffee right into the filter group. Infinitely variable grinder setting. €259.

He’ll check delivery times and let me know before we order.

Meantime do some research to confirm his assessment (mixed reviews, but it’s probably the one I want…) and the price (I can get it on-line for €215 shipped, but he’s local, I’ll give him the business. With a bit of haggling)

No return call to tell me whether it’s available. Wait 2 days. Wait 3 days. Wait 4 days.

Figure it’s not available and on the verge of ordering on-line when….. get an email saying it’s there for collection.

This is magic. I haven’t ordered it, but it’s there.

We would have bought it anyway, so I figure that I’ll at least get a chance to work out the right grind setting with him and maybe get 250gm of free beans (€5 worth …) for free.

“So which setting on my machine (he has a demo machine all set up) corresponds with the espresso grind on your machine?”, fully expecting him to grind a few beans on his machine and show me how to set it up on my machine.

“Oh”, he says ” you just have to play around with it until the grind feels about the same”.

I was just too gobsmacked to suggest that he does what I figured he’d do in the first place – provide some after-sales service.

So I pick up the box and drive home.

If I’d ordered it via the interweb, I’d have got exactly the same level of service (i.e. none) for cheaper.

And I would have had it delivered to my door.

Makes one think….

Postscript: I’ll need a second espresso machine in the fairly near future. 


Two guesses where I’ll be buying it


Hint: 
First word. 5 letters. A football team in Milan
Second word. 3 letters. Spiders weave them.