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Opinion

 A big smile met me in the Co-op shop in my village yesterday. The shop staff know me as someone who WILL talk at them/to them. 'How are you?'

       'Pretty good,' I replied. 'How would you go about making tomato chutney?' I don't waste an opportunity to talk with the normal stuff about weather or whatnot. I wanted a personal response.

     'Let's Google it!'

Let's not, I thought. I knew what Google would say and I knew what I would prefer it to say. My preference would be for a recipe that says crush a pickled walnut up in a pestle and mortar and boil for half an hour and add that to the sugary water vinegar liquid that goes in with the cooking tomatoes; or something like that. You know, use WoodApple jam instead of sugar; wave a satsuma over a pan of hot water and count backwards from ten; make it at 3am; add basil; add the haws from the hawthorn bush to thicken it. 

     'Tomatoes, garlic, ginger, sugar and vinegar.' But no salt or pepper or chilli or sumac or harissa, rhubarb, or beetroot. No advice that it should be 6% vinegar, and not an onion in sight!

     'Thanks.' I said as exuberantly as I could.

Yesterday in the shop was not going to be exciting. Old ladies just bought carrots and potatoes, and adolescent students bought sandwiches and soft drinks. A quiet pall of inattentiveness descended on the shop and people bumbled back to their cars, their minds elsewhere. I was so demoralised that I had to put some small change into my bicycle basket and pretend that someone else had dropped it in there as a surprise gesture.

I looked all about me, grinning with surprise, but cunningly no-one revealed themself as the charitable donor. No-one looked surreptitiously back. Just in case someone was hiding in the back of their car I bowed like I have seen Japanese people do, and put my palms together as I have seen Thailanders do. Now I have a mission, I thought to myself.

I went to the local post office for inspiration for who would be in my mission plan. I lurked while three customers paid and left, but none of them needed an extra seventy-eight pence. In the end, I asked the Sri-Lankan lad in the post office how he would make tomato chutney while I paid for a packet of Cream Crackers for £1.79. Hah! I thought to myself. My imaginary donor has now cost me £1.01 or £1.79, depending how to see it!

Google has a lot to answer for. If it didn't exist and the young staff in the Co-op had no idea about tomato chutney, I would have asked an elderly British white woman about horseradish and rhubarb and how to destroy Brussels Sprouts by boiling them for too long. Google just took all the wind from my sails.

Where did all the interesting people go?