´óÏó´«Ã½

From the Reverend Richard Coles:

Ìý

A new posh shopping centre has opened near us, and with it come delights Northamptonshire people, like me and Rowan, have only dreamed of: Shea butter body-lotion; vegan sandals; a craft megastore.

I was so taken with the last of these I impulse-bought a bumper pack of origami paper and spent my lunch hour making what’s meant to be a a flying heron, but actually turned out looking like a roll-up.

Worse, though, was the encounter I had at the new Food Hall. It’s swanky, offering choices of pecorino and heritage carrots, and sub-genres of parsley, and I greedily loaded up my basket only to find a rank of self-service checkouts at the exit.

Within three seconds of trying to place a bag in the bagging area I required assistance, and the lady with the login had to return twice more before I’d even scanned my first yogurt. Things really degenerated thanks to an awkwardly located barcode on a bunch of flowers which resulted in me pouring half a pint of water into the machine’s electronics. The helpful lady reappeared with handfuls of tissues, and we just managed to save the national grid from catastrophic failure - alas, by then the machine had ceased to acknowledge my purchases, so we had to unpack them, rescan them, and pack them again.

Best thing in all this was the helpful lady - thank you. Worst thing was the useless machine, intended to make life better but making it worse. Who hasn’t wanted to drive a steamroller over one of these accursed devices, if only to silence the electronic voice saying, breathlessly, ‘unexpected item in bagging area’, as if inviting us on an adventure of boundless discovery? Worse than frustration, though, is the subtraction of one more human interaction from your day. For some that may be the only human interaction of the day. And worse than that, is the fate of the person made redundant by those machines.

An expendable resource, is the theory; but no human beings are expendable resources. Jesus stood in solidarity with such expendables precisely to remind us that we are alike in God-given dignity, not mere machinery made of meat. Rage, people! Rage against the machine!

Ìý