Never knowingly – Chapter 1
I first saw her in the electrical department of John Lewis in The Mall, the new’ish out of town shopping centre at Cribbs Causeway to the North of Bristol. She was having a fierce argument with the defeated looking sales assistant. She was in her mid twenties with long hair that I would have described as ginger if I didn’t instinctively have the feeling that she would have her own name for the colour, probably titian or strawberry blonde or something equally pretentious. She was dressed in a sharp black business suit looking efficient and organised and was clearly intimidating the guy from John Lewis who was trying to sell her a television. There were two incongruous accessories however. One was the French style beret perched on the left side of her head and the other was the long white silk scarf that hung down to her waist front and back after completing one circuit of her neck. I couldn’t decide if she reminded me more of Isadora Duncan just before the car ride or Snoopy on a windy day.
‘Never knowingly undersold it says on all your advertising’ she insisted ‘so why is this television twenty pounds cheaper in PC World in Bristol? And don’t tell me to go to PC World and buy that one, I am here now and I expect to receive some of that much vaunted superior customer service of yours’
‘Yes madam’ he said ‘ we are known for our superior customer service and so I will go and fetch the Electronics Department Manager to deal with your problem’
‘I don’t have a problem young man’ she said haughtily to the guy who looked old enough to be her grandfather, with a greasy comb over that was worthy of the Charlton brothers. ‘The problem is yours if you are making promises in your advertising that you have no intention of keeping’
Indeed, madam, I won’t keep you a moment’ and off he trotted patting his hair back in place as he went.
I stood and listened in silent admiration. I usually accepted the listed price on anything I bought even though I might know it as a rip off. Anything for a quiet life was my view but I always resented being taken advantage of. I moved over and stood unseen behind a tall fridge freezer, out of sight but still within hearing. I wanted to hear the end of this confrontation. My money was on the young woman. She turned round and caught me looking from behind my temporary Hotpoint home. She smiled and winked at me before putting her indignant face back on to await the arrival of the department manager.
He arrived quickly, all bustling brisk efficiency. ‘How can I help Madam, Mr Gilbert here informs me that you have a problem?’
‘As I have just explained to Mr Gilbert, I do not have a problem but you do. You are not living up to your advertised promises of never being knowingly undersold and I am getting less impressed by your customer service by the minute. I have seen this LCD 42 inch television in PC World at a price that is £20 below yours. My friend Cyril here will vouch for that, won’t you Cyril?’ she said, turning to me for confirmation. ‘Or would you like me to get the manager at PC World on the phone for you as you obviously don’t believe me?’
‘Err yes, of course’ I said hesitantly as I perjured myself for a stranger who had just called me Cyril.’ I had never thought of myself as a Cyril and I hoped other people didn’t either.
‘I believe you, of course Madam and you may certainly purchase the television for the lower price. Mr Gilbert will see that it is taken care of immediately’. He edged away like a rabbit involved in a conversation that he didn’t want to be having, with a ferret. I don’t think he wanted to be put in a position of offering any more discounts.
‘Thank you, Mr ?’
‘Chamberlain, madam and may I take this opportunity to thank you for shopping at John Lewis,’ ’ came the clichéd response as he disappeared behind a shelf full of electric kettles. I think the heat was getting to him.
‘Come on then Mr Gilbert, let’s get this sorted out. I’ll do the paperwork with you and Cyril here will carry the TV out to the car, won’t you Cyril?’ Like I had a choice? I could have told Mr Gilbert that I had never seen this woman before but she intrigued me so I went along with the charade.
I followed her out to a battered looking black Mondeo estate, staggering under the weight of the Toshiba box on the frozen car park. She lowered the back seats to give more room to for me to slide the TV in through the tailgate and then turned to me with a wicked smile, held out her hand and said. ‘We had better introduce ourselves Cyril and then I’ll buy you a cup of coffee to thank you for your acting efforts, if you have the time?’
I took her hand and said ‘My name is Clements, Peter Clements,‘ and yes, I would like to have a coffee with you and hear about your other discounting adventures.’
‘Good to meet you Peter’ she said ‘ I think I prefer Peter to Cyril.
‘So do I,’ I said fervently.
‘My name is Jane Lewis, never knowingly underclothed’ she replied
‘And do you keep to your advertising better than your brother John?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘ but I don’t think Cyril is going to confirm that for a while do you, Peter?’ she said with a cheeky grin as she linked her arm through mine and led me to Carluccios’ for a coffee and a sticky bun.
We chose a quiet table in a corner and started talking while she took off that ridiculous beret and shook her wonderful hair free. The scarf stayed in place. We ordered two cappuccinos and macaroons, I liked their sticky, undercooked texture and the dry piece of rice paper on the bottom, so did Jane it seemed. I asked her why the big issue over the price of the TV in John Lewis. ‘I know £20 may seem a lot but surely not when you are prepared to spend about £500?’
‘It isn’t the money, Peter,’ she said. ‘It is the winning that counts. I always feel that the world is against me and, if I can win these little things, then perhaps I can win my battle against the world.’
‘Is it the world and events that you feel are conspiring against you or is it people?’ I asked.
‘It’s the world for sure, not people’
‘Give me an example of what you mean’
‘OK, take mirrors then’
‘Mirrors? What are you talking about?’ I said.
‘Well, you know the old conundrum about why do mirrors reverse your reflection side to side when they don’t reverse you top to bottom? I understand why after hearing Richard Feynman explain it. If you are facing a mirror then the reflection it shows is as if you had walked around to face the back of the mirror. If you did a somersault over the top of the mirror, you will see the same reflection, you head will not have changed places with your feet but you left and right will still have changed places. Just try it, if you dare, you will see it works.
Then there is the next question. If a mirror’s surface is about 95% reflective on average, that means that 5% of my reflection is missing. So where is it, where has it gone?’ Look at it from a quantum perspective. The quanta of light are photons, small packets of light as postulated by Max Planck in 1900. So if a mirror is 95% effective it follows that of 20 photons fired at a mirror, 19 are reflected and 1 passes through. The question then is, which photon passes through? What is different about that one and how does it know what to do?’
‘So what is the answer?’ I was baffled.
‘The answer is that every photon is exactly the same so it doesn’t decide whether to pass through or not, it is purely random chance – there is no cause and effect in the quantum world. It is all down to probability. What is worse is the fact that if you try to look at what is happening to see which photon passes through then you will probably change the result to a different one. So, by looking at what is going on, you change what is going on. This mirror experiment is not unique, this is how the whole universe works. How weird is that? So going on further. You have observed what is happening and so probably changed the result but the original result has also happened but in a different universe. This means that I can change which universe, or reality, I exist in by deciding whether or not to look at something happening.’
‘Are you for real? Do you really think like this or are you just saying these things to test me or wind me up because what you have just describe doesn’t make sense to me’
‘ Exactly! There is a famous saying that, if you think you understand quantum physics, then you don’t. It just cannot be understood from a classical scientific or commonsense viewpoint, even Einstein said it didn’t make sense even though he eventually had to admit that it described how the universe worked better than his relativity. It has now been proven many times and is the basis on which computers, mobile phones etc work.’
‘How do you know about all this, are you a scientist?’
‘ No I have just read up on it a bit to try and understand how the world works and I have some practical experience of its effects.’ I let that pass, not wanting to open another Pandora’s.
‘And do you understand how the world works after all that reading?’
‘No but I have found out that no one does. My overriding view is that nothing is as it seems to be and there is no real reality. How can particles such as photons and electrons be in two or more places at the same time and don’t decide where they want to be until someone looks at them? This has proven to be the case many times and two different particles can be aware of each other even when they are separated by many light years, what is called entanglement and Einstein called spooky action at a distance. This appears to break one of the barriers in physics which is the speed of light in a vacuum but it doesn’t because you cannot know that these two particles are aware of each other until after it has happened and you compare views.
When you add to all this the fact that all matter is nearly all space then you end up with a universe that may or may not exist and, if it does exist then it is made of atoms that are nearly all nothing and have a high probability of not existing at all. Furthermore, if they do exist then no one knows where they are until they look at them. The most likely explanation for all of this at the moment is that we live in one of a possible 10500 possible universes that has eleven dimensions.
The other possibility is that everything in the universe is a three dimensional hologram that is generated from the information on a two dimensional surface, just as a flat screen television can provide the information of a three dimensional world.’
I sat in stunned silence until I managed to ask at last, ‘ What has this got to do with getting a discount on a flat screen television in John Lewis?’
‘I think it makes me feel I have some control in this universe in which we are living.’
‘And where does the lack of underclothes come in?’ I couldn’t resist.
‘I forgot to switch the washing machine on yesterday so I had no clean underclothes to wear today, Cyril’
‘I suppose you were thinking about quantum mechanics at the time – and the name’s Peter by the way.’
‘Yes, I remember of course Peter, it is just that I enjoy teasing you and I probably will even after we are married with three children…’
‘What are you talking about, how can you possibly know that we will have three children, that is assuming we do get married of course, and, and, and,’- I stuttered to a halt, not really knowing what I was saying but I now had a picture in my head of spending my life with this beautiful, intelligent woman and the picture was becoming more appealing the more I thought about it.
‘The thing is you see, Peter,’ she said, emphasising my name, ‘quantum physics shows that time travel is possible. I have tried it and it works so that is how I know that we will have three children’
With that statement I knew that I was sitting across from a complete nutter. My opinion must have shown on my face so, with a laugh, she said, ‘I can see you don’t believe me so I’ll give you a demonstration.’
‘That won’t be necessary’ I said as I grabbed the bill from the table and headed towards the cashier, pulling my wallet from my jacket pocket and spilling ten pound notes on the floor in my haste to escape.
I first saw her in the electrical department of John Lewis in The Mall, but I couldn’t shake off the strangest feeling that I had seen her there before even though I could never knowingly understand when.
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