My Usual Shopping Round
We go shopping every day. The other day my mother took
me on a usual shopping round. We went to the grocer's and
greengrocer's as we had run out of sugar and onions.
At the greengrocer's there was a long queue. But we had
nothing to do but stand in the queue if we wanted to get to
the counter and have some onions. The shop-girl weighed us
half a kilo of onions, we thanked her and went out. Then we
made our way to the grocer's where we bought a kilo of sugar
and some sausage. We were about to go home as my mother
suddenly remembered we had hardly any bread in the house.
We dropped in at the baker's and bought a loaf of brown
bread, some rolls and buns. On our way home the mother
decided to call at a commercial shop. She was looking for a
present to my father — as it was his birthday soon.
As soon as we entered
the shop, we found ourselves in a
fantastic motley city of silk skirts and shirts, woolen pullovers,
frocks and leather boots and shoes. The smiling girl
met us at the counter. My mother said she wanted to buy a
size 50 shirt of a dark-blue colour. The girl suggested looking
at a dark-blue cotton shirt with short sleeves. The shirt was
the latest fashion and we were sure the father would like it.
We paid the money at the cash-desk. The cashier gave
us a
receipt and with it we came up to the shop-assistant. She
passed us a wrapped parcel with the shirt, thanked us and
added they were always glad to see us at their shop and we
happy and a bit excited went out of the shop.
It was ten o'clock at night. Eddie was tired and hungry. He spent the last five hours talking to the company's senior managers. He realized that he would have to resign from his job, and also that was facing the possibility of going to prison. Six months ago, everything was fine. He had a wonderful job and he made a lot of money. Then he met some people who advised him badly. They gave him a list of companies and told him to buy their shares. He had to use the company's money to do this. At first the shares were rising, so he bought some more. Everything seemed so easy. Then the stock market crashed and he lost everything. Eddie telephoned his wife before leaving the office. He apologized for not phoning earlier, explaining that he had a difficult meeting. "You sound upset. Anything wrong happened?" she asked. "I’ll tell you about it if you want when I get back," he replied.
