It is a pleasant building, the lifts don't work but fortunately my many forays were to the ground floor. Its brightly lit and even has a semblance of air conditioning!
It also has a television which is either showing soccer or wildlife movies.
When one enters it is rather daunting because the rows and rows of green plastic padded seat are generally all full. One is tempted to lose interest seeing this multitude of happy faces, but it is only on closer inspection, that one realizes that very few of the chair occupants are bona fide NSSA clients!!
I mean, wouldn't you, if you had a few hours to kill, rather than stand on a pavement, put your feet up in air conditioned comfort and watch the soccer
Once one has established the status quo and the intricate queuing arrangements, its actually a piece of cake...
The Concierge is a cheeky fellow, he abides, to the letter of the law, the 'no cell phone sign' and will not even allow one to play Scrabble, Tetris or Angry Birds!!
The average age in the Hall is 96 and everyone is friendly and obliging if creaky. They will carefully explain the queuing mechanism, avoiding those who are merely 'parking off' and indicating the bottom shuffling motion one must adopt in order to keep one's place in the line!!
The television is the focal point, and whether it is soccer or wild dogs killing impala, the hall is abuz with involved excitement!!
The officials at NSSA are a chatty lot, they obviously love to see their queues constantly packed as they insist on telling one, step by step the importance of completing their forms correctly.
The only problem is they will not give you all the rules at once, instead they like to eek them out, one by one, visit by visit, so you become a familiar face and have to visit three or four times before you emerge triumphantly with your most important little piece of yellow paper.
Ah well, was it worth it In the end my pension will be about ten shillings!! but as Mother used to say, 'Look after the pennies and your pounds will look after themselves'.
