“Bucket!” he shouted. They hadn’t let him in!
Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 608 [2 November 2021]
Published: 2 November 2021~Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes
So I said to my wife, “No, I don’t think so. I’ve got better things to do this morning.”
But she looked so disappointed that I relented, saying, five minutes later, “OK, I will walk with you to the market.”
“You don’t have to, unless you want to,” she quickly said ~ a little too quickly for my liking.
I know when I’m not wanted.
I remember hearing my mother and father quarreling when I was about six months old, blaming each other, arguing about whose fault it was. I have no idea what they were arguing about, but when I got to the age of five I suspected something was wrong when I came home from school one day and found some sandwiches, a bottle of pop and a map to Katmandu in a travelling bag on the doorstep.
Never one to take a hint, I knew that my wife really wanted me to walk to the market with her today, so I swiftly replied, “Well, if you really want me to come with you, I will.”
Apart from knowing when I’m not wanted ~ it gets easier as you get older ~ I needed to buy myself a new atchkee. No, not ‘latch key’. Atchkee is the phonetic spelling for spectacles in Russian. Isn’t my Russian improving! I am a two-pairs spectacles man. I like to have one pair so that I can find the other.
This was a great excuse for being a nuisance, so I got ready, tried not to look at the cat, who always looks sour at us when he sees that we are leaving the house, and off we went, on foot, to the central market.
“Ee by gum,” I might say, if I was from Up North in England, “but it were a grand day.” Here we were at the end of October, underneath a bright blue sky and the sun right up there where it is supposed to be.
We stopped off for a coffee at the top of the Lower Pond, risked the public Portaloos and then made our way to the market from there.
Being Saturday, and good weather, the second-hand and collectables market was in full swing.
When it was our business to buy and sell, we always had an excuse to buy, now all we could say was, ‘we’ll just have a quick look’. And then leave an hour later barely able to carry what we had bought.
Today was no exception. That’s willpower for you!
During the course of not buying anything we got to talking to one of the market men, who was not wrapping something up for us because we hadn’t just bought it.
“Good thing about outside markets,” said I, no doubt saying something entirely different in Russian, such as “Would you like me to pay twice as much for that item that we really should not be buying?” It must have been something like this, because when I checked he had short-changed us.
That sorted, I continued: “Good thing about outside markets, you don’t need ‘Oo Er’ codes.”
“QR codes!” my wife corrected me impatiently, as she bought herself a pair of boots that she didn’t need.
“QR codes!” repeated the market man solemnly, with a sorry shake of his head. “It’s bad business and bad for business. You can’t go anywhere without them now.”
“Niet!” I agreed, looking all proud at myself for saying it in such a Russian-sounding way, which enabled him to sneak in with, “But if you do not have a QR code, there is another way of getting access to bars, shops and restaurants.”
My ears pricked up at this intelligence, or was it because someone walking by had laughed, as if they knew what I didn’t?
I was too intrigued to be diverted: “How is that?” I asked
“Tin buckets!” replied the market man, with stabilised conviction.
“Tin, er …?”
“Like this!” the market man infilled.
And there, in front of me, where it hadn’t been a moment ago, was this large tin bucket.
As tin buckets go, it was quite the bobby dazzler.
It was one of those vintage enamel jobs; a pale, in fact, with a cream exterior and a trim around the rim.
“If you don’t yet have your QR code,” the market man continued to solemnise, “all you need is a tin bucket and, as you say in England, Fanny’s your uncle.”
Well, there is nothing LGBTQITOTHER about that, I had to admit.
“OK,” I said curiously, “I’m listening.”
There was Olga in the background, sticking to her non-purchasing guns, busily buying something else.
“That’s it really. Just say at the door, ‘I haven’t received my QR codes yet, but I do have a tin bucket’.”
I am telling you this just in case you are wondering why I have photos in this post of me walking around Kaliningrad with an old tin bucket. (That’s not a nice thing to say about your wife!)
The next stop was the city’s central market, where I bought a pair of specs, better to see my tin bucket with.
I needed to confirm that I really had bought that old tin bucket and that it wasn’t, after all, a figment of my stupidity.
“Ahh, you are British!” the spectacle seller exclaimed.
“No, English,” I corrected him. “Anyone and everyone can be ‘British’. All you need is to arrive illegally on a small boat, and a couple of months later they give you a piece of paper with ‘you’re British’ written on it.”
Now I had my new specs on, I could see that approximately 75 per cent of the market had been rendered inoperable. Many of the shutters were down, and I could read the ‘closed’ signs that were Sellotaped to them, stating that they would remain closed for the ‘non-working week’. If coronavirus turned up here in the next seven days, it would be sorely disappointed.
Nevertheless, by the time we had exited the market at the end where the spanking brand-new shopping centre has been built, my bucket was getting heavier.
I put it down for a rest, on the pavement, directly outside of the new shopping centre entrance, thus giving myself a commanding view of the row upon row of plate-glass doors, behind which sat shops that still had nothing inside of them. Obviously, no chances were being taken. Should the thousands of square metres of space remain empty, the risk of non-mask wearers and QR fiddlers entering the building would be considerably reduced. In addition, the spanking shopping-centre was surrounded by a large impenetrable fence, creating a 20 metre no-go zone between itself and the pavement. A red-brick fortress had also been built just across the road, so that any attempt to cross the minefield between the pavement and shopping centre, if not thwarted by the mines and patrolling Alsatian dogs, would be repelled by a volley of arrows, or something closely resembling them, fired from the slits in the fortress wall. In particularly demanding circumstances, for example when everything in the shops that had nothing in them was half price, thus attracting the crowds, I would have thought that backup, in the form of mobile dart vans stationed close to the entrance, would be advisable. But who am I to say? Confucius say, “Man with tin bucket talks out of his elbow!” Confusion says, “Man with elbow talks out of his tin buttock.” (The last sentence is sponsored by The Cryptogram and Sudoku Society.)
A lesser person would have been intimidated by fantasies of this nature, but not I. I had a tin bucket and, in case I haven’t divulged this already, that same tin bucket contained a green leather jacket, which I did not buy from the second-hand market, and a jar of homemade horseradish sauce, which I had not bought from the city market.
Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes
The bucket was as heavy as my heart as we parked ourselves on one of the seats outside a once-often visited watering hole, Flame. We were waiting for a taxi.
We had not long been sitting there, when I began to develop a jealousy complex. Staring back at us from the large glass windows were our own reflections. What were they doing in the bar without QR codes? It was then that I noticed that my reflection had an old tin bucket with him. What a coincidence, it was not dissimilar to mine. I recalled the wisdom of the man on the market who had sold me the bucket; his tale about old tin buckets having parity with QR codes for gaining access to cafes and restaurants.
However, before I could put his advice to the test, our taxi arrived. We said farewell to our reflections and hopped inside the vehicle. Our taxi driver, who was a stickler for rules, did insist that our bucket wear a mask for the duration of the journey. Stout fellow!
Although the taxi driver never asked, I was unable to say whether or not we managed to gain access to anywhere using our tin bucket in case the authorities find out and proceed to confiscate every tin bucket in Christendom.
The taxi driver did want to know what we were going to use that old tin bucket for, but I was not about to divulge my secret to him.
Give me a week two and I will divulge it to you. Although there will be a small charge for the privilege.
You can ‘read all about it!’ ~ as they say ~ in Mick Hart’s Guide to Homemade Vaccines.
Some posts that have nothing about tin buckets in them:
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer
Something for the World’s End, Sir!
UK Lockdown New Board Game
Exit Strategy Board Game
Clueless World Health Game
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