In the quest to find things to do with my days before I head out to America next week, I did my second Monday as a volunteer at the St. Francis Hospice Charity Shop. Sadly, there were no Essex-clusive incidents such as we encountered last week, just a reasonable amount of actual physical labour, which I felt later that evening. I did meet one vinyl record collector, and gave him my card, but I think he may expect me to charge him similar prices for original 1950s R&B albums that he was paying for Barry Manilow and Max Bygraves albums (5 for a pound). 

                 No, this week, my encounter with Essex-centricity involved what I thought was the simple act of paying a congestion charge to drive into Central London later in the week. This is my first time ever having to deal with this bit of legislation first initiated in London in 2003. By bloody damn, if you want the pleasure of taking 10-15 minutes to go about 500 metres, then we should charge you for that privilege! OK, it was really done to eliminate some of the horrible traffic London was encountering, expected when you got a population density greater than that of Manhattan. An ex-girlfriend of mine, who works a tour guide, needed someone to meet her and her Dutch group at London City Airport and transport their luggage to the hotel in Bayswater area that they’d be staying. For this simple courier job, I’d get £80. It does mean dealing with London traffic, but it’s at a reasonable time of day, and I’ll be done before afternoon rush hour. No problem.

                 Well, yes, problem, because suddenly all the shops I found in my area which purported to take payments for congestion charge had decided to stop doing it. The first place I went to, a convenience shop right next to Dagenham Heathway tube station, still had the © sticker on the window, but when I asked the man behind the counter if I could purchase congestion charge, he must have mistaken my words for “Could I shag your daughter,” given the foul look he gave me. He then informed me they had discontinued doing it, and in his VERY broken English described where I could buy it. “Cross street, to right, past fish and chips shop.” I think. Bottom line is, I’ve been coming to Heathway shops for nearly 7 years. I know what’s where on that street, and what he described didn’t even sound like a shop, nor were any of his landmarks existent. Well, OK, the street he advised me to cross is indeed there.

                  So no help there. I had to go to my Halifax bank branch to activate my debit card for use abroad. Well, there must be someone there who knows the area, but no. Until one of the other tellers volunteered. As a sidelight, I understand the partitioning of the teller windows to avert robberies as much as possible, but the open areas allow for little sound to pass through, so almost anytime I do a transaction there, there is at least one time where I or the teller have to repeat what we’ve said. The teller that had my information was one window over, and told me Essex-cessively that I could pay congestion charge at the “swee’shawp ran the cawnah.” After discerning by the third time that he was saying “Sweet shop around the corner,” I still had no idea right away which shop he was referring to. I first thought he meant the Percy Ingles bakery, which would certainly qualify as a “swee’shawp,” but eventually determined that he meant the newsagent.  

                   I go to the newsagent, but nope, and here was such an incredible amount of language barrier that after many repetitions, I was willing to absorb the blame. I actually said to him, “Sir, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but nobody is making any sense today.” Eventually, I got his suggestion that maybe I try the post office. I didn’t want to, but it seemed a logical choice, in spite of past history of waiting 15 minutes in those ghastly queues to post a letter. As I stood there, and thankfully for only about 5 minutes this time, I didn’t see anything on the walls to indicate they handled what I was after. Sure enough, I get to the front, the cashier I ask says no they don’t do it, and has no idea where I could go. But there’s a nice couple in the queue, who overhear my query and volunteer, “The swee’shawp jus’ up the way.” Time to go home.

                   It was only on the walk home that I thought of petrol stations. Well, duh! I found one online, an Esso station I’d also been going to for the whole time I’ve lived here. They took care of me, but with the minor complication that in taking my registration number, it had a “Zed” in it, and the lady behind the counter couldn’t find the Z on the keypad. While the transaction was being taken care of, I was reminded for the zillionth time to ask myself, who named the letters of the alphabet first? The English had the language first, but I know the transposing of Mozart’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to the ABC song was clearly American. Why else would they have the 3rd and 4th lines go “Q-R-S and T-U-V, W, X and Y and Zee,” other than it rhymes? When I was first in Britain, I heard a woman singing the same song to her child, with the 4th line going “W, X and Y and Zed.” Maybe America called it Zee for the sake of the song? I don’t think I’m going to change anyone’s mind here….

                    Anyway, my congestion charge is sorted, “soh-id” as they might say in Essex, and I look forward to taking about an hour to drive maybe five miles and a reasonable amount of swearing. And the only person I may have to talk to tomorrow would be my ex, who’s lived in London for 45 years, and has a proper London accent. We had our own communication problems, but none of them had to do with any mangling of the language.