‘Excuse me, but are you self-serving?” The question took me by surprise, and I could only apologetically ask my interlocutor to repeat it from behind his mask. “Are you self-serving?” Caught totally off guard, I looked at him blankly for a few seconds and wondered if I might be entertaining angels unawares. An odd-looking angel, I thought, with his basket full of shopping; the God of surprises strikes again. 

Then the penny dropped. I was in the queue in Sainsbury’s, and my unknown friend was wondering whether I wanted to go ahead of him and use one of the available self-service machines that such companies have introduced to keep waiting times down (and presumably payroll costs as well). He was anticipating being served at the counter that stocks the spirits, cigarettes and lottery tickets, and hadn’t wanted to hinder my progress. 

I thanked him; as it happened I was in the same boat, preparing to indulge what an old Oxford friend – now a priest of the Ordinariate – once kindly called my “only visible vice”. But what a question, and from a total stranger! Having made my purchases and deposited them in my natty little reusable jute number, I headed back to the flat deep in existential thought. “Are you self-serving?”   

One of the appeals of this Sainsbury’s is its convenience; it is all of 20 seconds’ walk from my kitchen. Whenever I am cooking and find I have run out of some essential ingredient, all I have to do is turn down the heat and pop around the corner. I pass the recycling bins on the way, so I usually fill my trusty bag with empty bottles and boxes; having dumped them carefully in the right receptacle, I then use the empty bag to bring my groceries home. Thus I am saving the planet one meal at a time; it’s all very Laudato si’.

I hope I am the sort of regular customer whose entry into the shop is at least greeted with indifference, rather than a sense of foreboding. Inevitably, there are those times when I am in a rush, or tied up in my own thoughts; as a rule I do my best not to take it out on anyone when I cannot find things, and I wait patiently if one of the local drunks has to be ejected before I can be served. I always try to smile, although behind a face covering it has to be done with the eyes, which can look a bit maniacal.  

We became quite the little community during the first lockdown of 2020. A hasty “good morning” to the security guard; a meaningful raise of the eyebrows to the shelf-stackers; a quick “cheerio” to the assistant on the till. All the staff wore name badges, which made for a friendly atmosphere. The half-cut homeless man outside stayed put long after others had been placed in local hostels by the council, kept going by worshippers at the local churches and mosque and other friendly passers-by. 

It occurred to me recently, however, that even after all this time the longstanding staff have absolutely no idea who I am. Why should they, since I have never introduced myself? We are tied to each other by bonds that are, essentially, no more than transactional. I go to the shop because I want to acquire the things that keep me ticking over; the staff are there because they presumably need the work. I remember once being surprised to see one of the junior employees shopping with a young woman and a baby, on the other side of town. 

I was also surprised by my surprise, for why shouldn’t he have had a family life of which I was totally unaware? I realise now that my vision of the shop in the early days of the government’s response to the pandemic was on the romantic side, born of the fact that these were the only people with whom I was allowed to interact at a time when it felt like we were all in it together. I hoarded neither pasta nor loo roll, and they knew it. I imagined them nodding approvingly as I left, having cheerfully done my bit. 

If I am honest, there were many others whom I would rather have met twice a week; it was the forbidding of meaningful engagement with friends and relatives that imbued the recent outcry over “partygate” with such visceral fury. I acknowledge, too, that as the months passed my model behaviour among people with whom I needed to engage, however briefly, had at least something to do with personal expediency, rather than a desire to do the right thing for its own sake; it became a form of exactly the kind of virtue-signalling that I normally loathe.    

“Are you self-serving?” Of course I am, then, at least to some extent; both consciously and subconsciously, and it is in the blithe insouciance of the latter that the darker, colder water pools. I daresay that you are self-serving too, in your own ways, and so – together – we come to Lent.

This article first appeared in the March 2022 issue of the Catholic Herald. Subscribe today.

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