 |
Have A Nice Day
Ray Kershaw realises that insincerity can mislead the unwary ...
Her smile was like a toothpaste as. She looked sensational and very young. But obviously enraptured by my middle-aged charms. We hadn't met before, but you can't disguise these things. All I'd said was, "Fifty pounds out, please".
Counting the notes, she enquired coquettishly, "Your day off today, then, is it?" Was it the magic of my new aftershave? Alas, even as I pondered, the fickle flirt was fawning on a callow, nose-piercing, youth.
The dropping penny hit me like a bucket of cold water. She was a graduate of what they once called a charm course - elevated these days to a vocational discipline. It was, after all a dark Monday morning, and cruel candour suggested that the mandatory bonhomie was concealing an antipathy not hard to understand. If it hadn't been for me, she could still have been in bed.
When Wendy rang last week euphoric with tidings that they'd chosen our house for a completely free survey, she addressed me with such tenderness it made me worry if she might be some long forgotten ex-fiancee. In the end it turned out all she wanted was my money. Insincerity is surely the cruellest deception.
But then, it can't be easy either selling double-glazing, so I thanked her profusely and from the bottom of my heart hoped she was having a wonderful day. My one residual worry was, had I been an older and lonelier person, the unaccustomed geniality might well have charmed from me a chunk of my savings.
What do you feel when someone tells you to 'have a nice day'?
Has insincerity ever got you what you wanted - how?
|
|
