As I emerged from the shower last week (where all good ideas happen), my mobile started ringing. ‘Mum’ flashed up and my stomach performed its now familiar lurch. It wasn’t the appointed hour. Something had happened. My bathroom is where I received the news of my Dad’s sudden death, so, in that strange way where significant life events imprint themselves into your cells, my bathroom now houses a latent fear within its walls along with the perfumes that instantly transport me to happy memories.
‘My shopping hasn’t arrived. It’s thirty minutes after the slot. I want to go out for my walk. What do I do?’
I detect the slight catch in the voice. My fiercely independent ‘don’t mess with me’ Mum. It’s three years of coping without your life partner and having a faceless entity screwing up the routine you’ve carefully crafted to keep you going. From a hundred miles away, my heart melts.
‘Did they not text to say they were running late? Could you leave a note and ask them to leave the bags in the garage whilst you go for your walk?’
‘No, I’ve had nothing. I’ve tried phoning their helpline but it keeps cutting out once you get through. They won’t leave bags as I have to unpack everything from their crates. Sod this, I’m moving to Morrisons.’ The barometer has shifted from mild alarm to bubbling range.
There’s only one thing for it, and that’s to attempt a super sleuth mission and get to the bottom of the great missing Sainsburys delivery. It will take my mind off the pitching hamster wheel. I know I’m about to enter a Kafkaesque nightmare and brace myself with a cup of English Breakfast. I call the Helpline (oh the irony) which tells me that ‘we are experiencing a high volume of calls’ but that mine is very important. The line then goes dead. It does this on my fourth attempt.
Every organisation over the country has failed to change their ‘high volume of calls’ message since the pandemic when we had nothing else to do but call places. By definition, a ‘Helpline’ is going to receive a high volume of calls. It’s definitely going to experience this from baffled customers wondering where their shopping is.
I go back to the website and marvel that I’m actively looking for the dreaded live chat/chat bot button. Nothing. No update on the website either. My only recourse is the broken ‘Helpline,’ aka ‘We really can’t be arsed-line.’ I now begin to understand my Mum’s threat of a Morrison’s defection.
I’m suitably outraged on behalf of my Mum and the entire Sainsburys Thursday delivery customer base, that I take to ‘X’ tagging Sainsburys seeking an answer to the vanished shopping. I immediately get an anodyne reply. The order has been cancelled, an £20 e-voucher will be sent and my Mum can rebook. Oh, and sorry for any inconvenience; there have been some ‘technical difficulties.’
I turn into ranty woman from the South-East. ‘Why has the order been cancelled? Why did you not think to inform your customers of the difficulties? Ocado manage to do this!’ (Dear God, I’ve pulled the Ocado card). ‘This is totally unacceptable.’ I’m met with the same stock reply which is just a written shrug of the shoulders. Meanwhile, on X, I learn that someone else’s Mum in their eighties has the same issue and they’ve bagged the next available slot with Tesco. A few others pop up with ‘Oi Sainsburys, where the f*** is my shopping?’
So, the morning goes by with a dissatisfying spat with Sainsburys, but at least I’m able to communicate the nature of their incompetence to Mum and reassure her that many others are confused about the supermarket pickle in which they find themselves.
So, what the hell has all this got to do with Patricia Highsmith, you may be wondering. At the time I was plunged into supermarketgate, I was in Highsmith immersive mode. A couple of months ago I had watched the Minghella version of ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ with my son, having read the book a while back. I have no idea how I didn’t see this at the time it was released, it being peak Jude Law season. I’m often reminded by friends of the time I went to see him play Dr. Faustus, saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m so close I could lick his face!’
It was interesting, then, to watch ‘Ripley,’ the Zaillian version, on Netflix recently in which Italy has never looked so menacing. I drank in the slow pace of it all and admired every beautifully shot frame with its architectural details. Never have desk accessories seemed so seductive (even more than they usually are) and stairs seemed so sinister. I felt a slight shiver the other day as I wrote with my ‘special’ fountain pen because it made me think of the significant amount of ‘pen-brandishing’ that goes on in the series, but that’s starting to sound a bit Freudian.
If you can ignore the portrayal of murder and the difficult and laboured disposal of bodies in the series, the Italian tourist board’s work was done for them. Instagrammers will be flocking to Atrani. Andrew Scott made me want to reprise my (very rusty and basic) Italian again, but I’m now having second thoughts about a Fiat 500. I also found myself obsessing about Marge’s brogues and the perfectly louche cut of her trousers convinced that if I had these, I too would write my book.
After eight wonderful episodes of dark humanity, it was only right that when a Faber notification popped up about Highsmith’s ‘The New York Years, Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1950,’ I should plunge in.
It’s a 600 page exhausting read, especially if, like me, you can’t leave it alone. It’s a world of endless martini drinking at all hours, people passing out, underground bars and clubs, everyone sleeping with each other and dropping in the early hours. At one gathering Highsmith notes that she’s with eight friends, six of whom she’s slept with. Bohemian doesn’t really cover it. Even if you’re a diehard party-goer, it will make you feel dull. My overarching thought was, ‘Wow, life before smart phones and the internet!’ By the end, you’re passively smoking and drinking with her. I was quite drawn to one of her declarations: ‘The world and its martinis are mine!’
It’s the wonderful frankness of it all that’s so compelling; the ongoing struggle of someone finding out who they are. Some things might make today’s reader wince, but in a world where everything is buffed, polished and ‘curated’ (influencers have killed that word for me), it’s so refreshing. The human condition in all its complexity, contrariness and messiness. There’s Highsmith, gradually making her way in the creative world, but she also at the dentist a lot having teeth pulled.
It’s a useful insight into how even the very best writers have their struggles. I was reading it (or rather escaping into it) at a point when I was feeling pretty gloomy about where I was at and the freelance writing landscape and some of it really made me snort:
‘The letter read: “Thank you for your story. I’m so very sorry there isn’t any space for it in Harper’s just now, but we’ll keep you in mind.” Crap.’ Plus ça change!
She talks about hoping to be at Time, Inc, even if it’s only pushing a broom and she’s scathing about Vogue. However, she recounts the rejections, the criticisms she receives and moves on to the next. Constantly onwards. She never gives up because she can’t conceive of anything else other than writing. It’s a fascinating examination of that compulsion.
So yes, my head was full of these diaries when the Sainsburys incident intervened. I went from martinis, galleries and a cast of fascinating characters to a world of the hourly slot and no one at the end of a Helpline. I think Highsmith would have given it short shrift and got back to the writing.
‘Got very good work done even though my hair was flat and the day was gloomy and strange.’ Hard relate Pat!
Thank you. You make great sense. It is good to juxtapose such things--culture and consumerism before and after the blasted Internet. It appears life always seems to lob a wrench our way. It just seems more colorful before there were BOTS and Online grocery stores that could care less about good service and prompt delivery.
Thanks Daisy! Yes, just the lack of a human around after I’d been reading about so much vivacity, moods and well, life lived rather than performed.