Fifteen again

Twenty-odd years ago I took on my first 'proper' after-school job working a till at Safeways. And not one of these fancy bar code scanners either, this was a find-the-price-tag, punch in the right number, allocate the right department code minefield of potential problems.

But I enjoyed it, having never had a toy cash register when I was little and having to make do with the chord keys on my Casio organ to ring through purchases for my teddy bears. Not so nice was the ritual humiliation at the hands ofmy co-workers who all went to the same local school and rather objected to the private school b*tch daring to come onto their turf, despite blending in so nicely with the regulation orange uniform.

At least there was no initiation ceremony, such as the one I fell right into at the DIY store later on on my youth, when I eagerly ran to the stock room to ask for a skirting-board ladder to help out. Ha, at least I didn't get the tartan paint ruse, I was prepared for that one.

Pay day was the great day though. We all marched up to the cash office to collect a jingling envelope of coinage for the £1.29 per hour wages we had accumulated playing 'let's see if I can ring this all through quicker than you can pack it' with the customers and announcing 'price check checkout three' in a sing-song voice over the tannoy.

Well today was my first pay day for my new teaching job. In a weird twist of fate I did not get my bank details to the Business Manager by the deadline and, this being Eastern Europe, where cheque books are a work of fiction, I was handed over £1000 in cash.

If only I had a piggy bank to store it all in, my journey to through the time warp would be complete.