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What's super about supermarkets?

The top-prize for annoying till-routines goes jointly in my head to Boots and Smiths. Smiths at airports always seem to be running special offers, so that whatever you take to the counter, you’re advised that if you buy two you can get something else free, or that it’s cheaper to buy this and that together. And even when you’ve done as you’re told, you then get asked if you’d like some other thing they’re offering.

I once tried to buy a sandwich and a drink in Boots, when I had about 30 seconds to eat it as I ran to the next job. I put the stuff on the counter, and held the money out.
“If you buy a third item, you can get a Meal Deal.”
“No thanks, I’m in a hurry.”
“It’s up to you sir, but it actually works out cheaper to get the third item.”
Oh all right then, I think, if you insist. I rush to the back of the shop, pick something I will throw away as soon as I get outside, rush back to the counter.
“I’m afraid that item isn’t eligible for a Meal Deal’.

I go back, pick the right thing, return to the counter.
“Will that be all sir?
Yes, I say, waiting to thrust the money at her and run.
‘Have you got a Boots card?’
No.
‘Would you like to apply for one today, sir?’
No thank you.
“I can give you a form, and you can take it away and fill it in and bring it back. Or you can apply online.
No thank you.
I finally get to the stage where she will take my money.
‘Here’s your receipt and your change, and this a voucher for No 7 skincare products. It’s valid until the 10th.’
I take the unnecessarily long and verbose receipt, the voucher, and my change, which is awkard to put away when you’re trying to hold your lunch (including a bar of something you didn’t want) with the other hand.

It’s not just Boots. M&S now give you the warning about the price of their bags. Sainsburys force you to go back and get two of things because there’s two for the price of one. And ask you how you are today, and if you have a Nectar card when all you want is to pay and go. Same thing at Tesco with their clubcards.

And quite literally every time I suffer this tedious routine (which is every time I go to a supermarket)  I smile as I hear Gillian Lynne’s voice from a conversation about the same subject:  ‘…and it all takes so long.’ she said.

There’s a wonderful irony about an octogenarian finding that the young aren’t moving fast enough. She’s also the most gracious and positive person I know, and this is almost the only time I’ve ever heard her say anything remotely resembling a gripe. It amused me that it was about something so mundane.  Nonetheless,  I’ve never been able to pinpoint why I found it so funny and memorable. Once I’d written the story down, the penny suddenly dropped . What’s wrong with all this checkout palaver is that it’s bad choreography, badly performed. And it’s not so much the content of the remark as who said it. When you are famous for choreographing  some of the biggest hit musicals in the world, saying that a routine  ‘all takes so long‘ is no longer just  a passing gripe, it’s a crushing, expert aesthetic judgement by someone who is supremely qualified to judge.  I love it.

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Daniel Jones rite-ing wrongs

Most of the time, my experience, education, instinct and what I’ve picked up from friends and colleagues serves me quite well when it comes to speculating and arguing about music and dance issues. But I’ve found that it’s the views I am most certain of that my friends have had to disabuse me of.

“Surely”, I said to Dan (left) once, “If ever there was a case for using CD in a rehearsal, it’s for Rite of Spring. With a score that depends so much on rhythmic accuracy and colour, what’s the point of having it played on an instrument like the piano that can’t produce anything like the range of sounds that you need? Much as I would rather protect my own job, and promote live music, Rite seems to be begging for a CD.”

“Well, no, actually.” said Dan, and went on to explain how with a score as complex as Rite of Spring, rehearsing it to piano, at different speeds, and crucially, without the orchestration, gave him (he felt) the opportunity to form mental maps of the music, melodies and fragments as contours, rather than fixed aural images of sounds. So that if one day, an oboe were to play a tune instead of the clarinet, or a bass drum forgot to come in, you’d still know where you were, because your mental image is of the structure of the work, not a mirror image of a recording so precise that if the reality should veer from it but a jot, you might fail to recognise it.

Pondering this for the nth time the other day, my eye wandered to the side of a Nairn’s oatcake packet, which had a line drawing of one of the cellophane packets inside. It’s the kind of drawing that we’re used to seeing all the time, but we don’t question the fact that we need a diagram, not a photograph in order to make sense of what it’s telling us.  Is this a parallel to hearing an orchestral score on the piano? And if you take it a step further, is this what a score is? And if you take it even further into what music might symbolise (if anything, depending your philophical bent) is music a kind of wireframe version of emotional states?

There are all kinds of arguments for live music, and all kinds for and against the piano, but Dan’s case for the piano in Rite rehearsals is one that has fascinated me and made me ponder for years. It’s thankfully made me a bit more cautious about assuming I know what works for other people’s heads musically.

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