Jeremy Clarke: Running into Rachel

I’d been trying to curb the habit — one day at a time — and then I felt a bit toxic and marched smartly into my favourite local charity shop as though I were on rails. I’ve been in this particular one a thousand times — a peasant enamoured with tat. I know all the volunteers by sight. One day it might be the big humble guy in the frock and with the devil-may-care approach to applying his lipstick. Or it might be the elderly deaf woman who taps at the touch-screen till with a trembling, apprehensive forefinger, as though the thing were an unexploded bomb; and always, always making a catastrophic error, and having to call the shop manager out from her Aladdin’s cave at the back of the shop, to void the transaction, reset the till, and begin again; and you are standing there for five minutes or more, by which time your almost concupiscent urge to own that £2.50