Bedevilled

Par 1. A Change of Scenery

I wrote this part while listening to:

Live at Vega – Kaizers Orchestra

Mule Variations – Tom Waits

Rain Dogs – Tom Waits

This is for my coleague Wouter because he always knew the value of Comic Sans … or maybe he didn’t.

It is my experience that people in this village don’t handle innovations very well. They would rather have everything stay the same; the way it was. The way it used to be. The way it has always been. Because it always has been that way it must be good. Changes seldom come and when they do, they come smoothly and unobserved and everyone will swear to it that it has always been like that. That is the way things go around here.

The village has a couple of beautiful sights to see and it has a couple of fantastic people living in it. As it goes in every city or small town, there are some bad seeds. Ferry, on the other hand is a good egg. On his shiny shopwindow you can see, in big white letters and in a font known to everybody, the words: Fruit and Vegetables. Playful, frivolous, yet with a certain businesslike edge to it and known amongst the locals as Comic Sans, what else?

It is clear and obvious to all and sundry in this village what is being sold here. Ferry, the happy and ever-smiling owner with his green sweater, brown apron and worn down loafers – in Dutch referred to as whorehouse sneakers – always tries his utmost to keep the window spotless and sparkling so that the name stays legible and the wares behind it remain clearly visible to all passers-by. He is proud of his window and at least as proud of his own business. A business he built up and made big. At least as big as it could get in a town this small and the shop the size it was.

“No costs were spared, Ferry,” a passer-by says. Ferry turns his head round to see Mr Brown touch the brim of his hat as a greeting. He, of course, did not mean the shop window, but the breath-taking building opposite Ferry’s Fruit and Vegetables. An eyesore to Ferry and, although half the town goes shopping there, also one to the villagers. It does not fit in with the small-town mentality and does not match the idiom of the surrounding buildings.

The low, blue, plastic crates in front of Ferry’s shop and the bigger wooden crates with fresh fruit look inviting and our cheerful grocer can’t complain about the custom. Everybody knows him and most of the town dwellers come to him for their fresh fruits and vegetables, although one or two may drive to the city nearby and go to the supermarket there to really hoard. But it is nothing to worry about for good old Ferry and especially not on a beautiful day like this with its clear, blue skies. Not a cloud in sight and birds are chirping merrily and treat all those who want to hear to a their beautiful birdsong.

Look at that, Mr Brown is just entering the shop after the curteous greeting. This well-dressed gentleman with his brown, cord jacket and matching shirt, his lovely Stetson flatcap on his bald head and his curly, grey moustache under his rather big nose has been a regular of Ferry’s since the dawn of day. Although their conversations hardly ever exceed the level of, ‘Lovely weather we’re having today, right?’ and ‘I’d like two pounds of apples, please.’ They feel like they know each other through and throuh. It seems as if they have no secrets for one another, even though they hardly ever talk about more than the precipitation or the lack thereof.

To be continued