time, touch, squash

Waiting for the London train.

At the new medical centre , instead of telling the receptionist that you have arrived for your appointment, you can touch a screen which asks you questions. Are you Male? Female? I  admit to "Male"; Date of Birth?; I provide it. Now comes the clever part, on the screen following the words, "You Are..." my name appears. Accurate, and in some cases (extreme loss of memory for example), could be useful. Next the screen tells me that I am checked into see the nurse. I ask the nurse how she likes the new premises, a marked contrast to the 100 year old building where the centre was previously housed. "Very nice", she says, " but some patients find it a bit clinical." I observe that the premises are, after all, a clinic. But now, clinical or not, I get a kick out of the technology.

An old couple in front of a plant stall at the market are examining vegetable plants. The couple are of the same height and  of similar antiquity, not so far removed from my own. "That's a ..." says the old man. "A marrow," prompts his wife, who then adds contradicting the speculation with which she has connived at, " it's not a marrow it's a squash. You get everything muddled up," she says. "He gets everything muddled up," she tells the stall holder. Her husband maintains a puzzled expression, as though he might have been right all along. And I don't blame him because, having grown marrows and squashes over the years,  I know that it is difficult, almost impossible, to tell the difference, when the plants, which are  of the same family with many different varieties of each, have no more than two  or three small leaves.