The man from Londis

The staff in the local Londis -- basically our corner shop, though it's bigger than average -- are on the whole very friendly, especially considering that I must appear to live off Frascati and bombay mix.

There's a new guy working there -- and when I say new, I mean new. I think at least new to the city but quite probably to the continent. His English is pretty good, and he's always both polite and competent (which is more than can be said for a lot of the students who have moonlighted in there), but he has a direct turn of phrase that can be quite disconcerting.

The first time I met him he said "Where do you work?". I told him. He had never heard of the place, which is quite unusual in Oxford, not to say the UK generally, given that my employer has over 90% brand recognition 'on the street'.

"What do you do?" Um, I said, well, it's hard to explain. "What have you achieved?". Um, I said, and patched together something about on the whole reducing the sum of human misery rather than adding to it. (An oblique and unsatisfactory answer in this case, but this is one of the metrics I use when I look in the mirror).

He wasn't convinced but he wished me every success. The man from Londis, I feel, is the new Man on the Clapham Omnibus. I left the shop feeling that we really should get our communications sharpened up a bit.

Mind you, last night I dropped in and he said "How many children do you have?"

joella