England 1 - Paraguay 0

June 10, 2006

With about an hour and half to kill before the start of England v. Paraguay game, I decided to take a stroll to town center to visit the mirror shop Sergio referred me to with my iPod playing the Buena Vista Social Club album.

I found a frame and mirror shop on Sussex St (map), which more or less fit Sergio's description.

Their selection of mirrors was kept downstairs. For such a small store, I thought the selection was pretty impressive.

After some browsing and narrowing my choice to two, I approached one of the shopkeepers for additional query.

me - "Are there differences between these two aside from the frame? For example, is the quality of glass different?"

salesgirl - "Yes. The quality of the mirror is different. I don't remember the word, but with these (cheaper) mirrors… (holding one of the smaller mirror) …well it's less apparent with these smaller ones."

me - "Distortion."

salesgirl - "Yeah. That's the word."

Sergio had talked about mirror quality, distortion, etc. before. It was not particularly pleasant looking at oneself on a mirror with distortion...

me - "Okay. One more question. Do you know if there is a reason for a steep discount on this one?"

salesgirl - (examining the mirror) "The discount was there before I started working here. You can have a look here... I see a small chip here but that can be mended with gold filler we have upstairs."

I inquire about delivery and other details. On the way upstairs (to take a look at the gold stuff, payment, etc.), we had a little small talk.

me - "So I guess you're not from this country?"

salesgirl - "No, I'm from Poland."

me - "Ah. I suppose you were not happy about last night's result?"

I had overheard her previous customer saying that she (customer) would have to get her husband to pick up the mirror after the football match.

salesgirl - "Yeah. It's so typical of them. It was just like this last time too. They barely qualified too. They're good, but…"

me - "They might get something out of it still. They did beat USA last time. I was out last night, and the place I was at had a TV on. There are some Polish people working there, and I asked the Polish girl there if she was rooting for Ecuador. I didn't know she was Polish though..."

salesgirl - "Yeah. It was like that last night at the restaurant I work during evenings…"

As I was waiting to pay for the mirror, I probably had an embarrassed look or something.

salesgirl - "It IS a very big mirror."

me - "I know. And I never bought a mirror before. (smiling) And it's all for a very silly reason."

salesgirl - "I think it'll look very nice when mounted on a wall."

me - "I think that would be too much effort for me. I'll probably keep in on the floor."

Thinking about it more, this is only the second furniture I have purchased in the UK. The first one was a coat stand.

After the purchase and arranging for delivery (the mirror is too big to fit in my car), one more line.

me - "Well. Now I better hurry back so I can watch the football game."

Was it to compensate for purchasing a big mirror? Who knows?

When I returned, the game had started already. I had only missed the first 4 minutes - but all of the scoring was done during those 4 minutes. Final score: England 1 - Paraguay 0.