There's a physical button below the LCD screen that enables an on-screen volume display on the touch screen, pressing the speaker icon cycles upwards through about 5 volume levels, then reverts to silent with a cross through the speaker icon, they still beep for the scanner (which is OK), but no annoying voice messages that are 10 seconds behind realtime.
Unfortunately they seem to have attendants on every "cluster" of self service tills who swoop and put the volume setting back after you leave, they also give you funny looks if you set the volume to zero on other machines as you're leaving.
But they did it differently in the old days. The assistant wrote out your receipt with a carbon duplicate and put it and your money in the cylinder to send it to the cashier. After a while it came back with your change and the top copy of the receipt, money was never kept at the counter.
Not mine, sadly... wrong side of the Pond plus an area of very low population density means there's no market for unusual stuff. One of the shops does do a few odds and ends from the old country - I can get Heinz beans, digestive biscuits and chocolate orange, for instance :-)
Haven't I mentioned it before? Back in 1995 the group that meets in what was my church hall wanted someone to help for six weeks, exam cover for the regular helper. "it's only six weeks and you're good with kids" said a friend, and I succumbed to her flattery (my life is almost totally shaped by throwaway comments from unrelated women!).
After six weeks I was enjoying it so much I asked whether I could stay (stupid question!), but I wasn't going to wear a uniform, just be a helper. After six months I gave in, became assistant leader, leader in 1998 which post I held until 2007 - had to give up for obvious reasons. And perhaps because I don't have kids of my own and haven't been worn down we did lots of outings, generally two each term - the plus of being leader is you get to choose where you go, so the London Transport Museum and Great Cockcrow Railway were high on my list.
Apart from being lots of fun (most of the time) it was good for me, being self employed, to take time away from the computer and do something different for a few hours each week. Another woman friend said to me years ago that I was working all hours and said, "you need to take out each week; if you just decide to, then every other week there will be a good reason why you can't. You need to find to find something that *forces* you to take a break from work". It was good advice and how I came to do my second degree as a PT student; Beavers came along just as I'd finished it.
The one sad thing was having to turn so many kids away: in Twickenham if we could have found the leaders we could have started several more groups and filled them easily.
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