Dan Brown :: A Clarification

In my last blog post I gave an account of a recent conversation I had with a shop assistant in a branch of WH Smith. The post gave rise to some stinging controversy in the comments, which on reflection, I thought I’d better address. So, in the name of full disclosure, I feel I should point out at this stage that the account of the conversation I provided last week was not a particularly accurate one. A more accurate version follows here:

Me :: [Handing over a card with the meerkat on it which I was buying for my grandmother, who likes meerkats] Just that please.

Lady :: Are you interested in half price Dan Brown today?

Me :: I’m sorry?

Lady :: You can order Dan Brown’s latest book for half price.

Me: Wow. No, I’m alright actually. And do you have to ask everybody that?

Lady: Aye. Sometime it’s Dan Brown, sometimes it’s half-price chocolates.

Me: Ha! Well, good day to you, Ma’am.

Lady: Good day to you, sir. Do come again!

Sorry if I misled anyone with my slightly doctored version below. It was never my intention to hoodwink or disconcert. I guess I was trying to be funny or something. Please accept my sincere apologies.

In other news, I am in my super spacious new room in London and today - because I think it will do me good - I started reading The Da Vinci Code. At the moment I'm only two chapters in, but I must say, it really is eminently readable.

Oh Oh Oh I Got the Dan Brown Blues

So this morning I had the following conversation with a young lady who works in WH Smith.

Me :: [Handing over a card with the meerkat on it which I was buying for my grandmother, who likes meerkats] Just that please.

Lady :: Are you interested in half price Dan Brown today?

Me :: I’m sorry?

Lady :: You can order Dan Brown’s latest book for half price.

Me :: Um, no, thanks. Do I look like a simpleton?

Lady :: Eh?

Me :: No, I was just wondering – do I look like a simpleton? You know, an imbecile.

Lady :: [Not sure] Erm… it’s half price. It’s a promotion.

Me :: The reason I ask, incidentally, is not because I’d necessarily have to be a simpleton to read a Dan Brown book, although…. [waiting in vain for some recognition of a shared sense of intellectual snobbery before giving up and continuing] No, it’s just that, if I did want to buy Dan Brown’s latest book, I’d probably already be aware of the fact. Without being prompted. Don’t you think?

Lady :: We ask everybody.

Me :: Well, I wish you wouldn’t.

Lady :: But we ask everybody.

Me :: Yeah, I’ve gathered that. You ask everybody. Great. It’s just that it doesn’t seem fair to me, you know? I mean, there’s my book, for example, a gorgeous, funny, moving little memoir that no one’s ever heard of, struggling for breath, slowly drowning in a sea of suffocating, interminable dross, and there’s Dan Brown’s latest congregation of moronisms, which has, if memory serves me well, an initial print run of 6.5 million copies – 6.5 million copies which will fly off the shelves like hot cakes in cold climate – and despite this already assured best seller status, WH Smith are making every effort to ram it down the throats of customers who don’t even want it. Two weeks before it comes out and it’s already the literary equivalent of McDonald’s fries. You know? ‘Do you want fries with that?’ Erm, no, thanks. If I’d wanted waxy strips of tasteless toxic spew with my order, I’m pretty sure I would’ve asked for them. Similarly, if I wanted to spend ten pounds on nearly 500 pages of poorly-constructed toilet paper, you would probably have known about it by now. Do you know what I’m trying to say?

Unfortunately, she was serving someone else by then.

Oh, Dan Brown.

How I hate you.