French supermarket cashiers won’t be hurried. Nor will their customers, many of whom seem caught out by a bill at the end, then laboriously write out a cheque. This might be a contrarian French anti-capitalist attitude (‘no, Monsieur: time is not money’), which is wholly admirable, of course, except when I’m in a tearing hurry and waiting to pay. While the pensioner in front of me fruitlessly riffled through her handbag for her chequebook for the third time, I stared out of the window and was instantly rewarded by the sight of a Fiat reversing into the rear of a parked Citroën. Wallop!
The drivers leapt out to view the damage, which was negligible, apparently. The driver of the Fiat was a small middle-class woman: the owner of the parked Citroën a big hairy farmer type wearing a sweat-stained vest. They then struck up a friendly conversation that was, I think, unrelated to the collision.
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