I knew yer one behind the counter would ask if I wanted anything else in that automated, corporate tone, so I beat her to the punch and said “can I have an almond croissant and nothing else please!?”

And she said “Sure, would you like anything else?”… I should have asked her again for the almond croissant but she would have asked me if I wanted anything else and we would have gone round and round and round in circles and I might never have come out of there again…

Maybe that’s where all the missing people go; ‘Can I have an almond croissant please and nothing else?’ ‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’, ‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’,‘Sure, would you like anything else?’ ‘Just the almond croissant please and nothing else’….

I couldn’t wait to get home and tear the covers off em and ram em down my throat.

I restrained myself though, as these are sophisticated creatures of delight.  I knew I had to play it cool with these…

I really had a bit of a pain in my head trying to decide which one to eat first.  I pondered over them and fondled each of them one by one.  I read their wrappers and took in what they had to say about how they were made, what they were made of and where in the world their innermost beans came from.

I decided by eliminating one from the list.  I decided to leave the Mora Mora Bar ’til last, for two reasons;

1. It was the most expensive – It cost a whopping £3.21
2. It says this on the wrapper:

“Worlds best Chocolate Winner – Silver Award 2007″.

I thought it must be pretty good tasting stuff and best kept for last.  I placed it carefully back in the fridge.

So it was a toss up between the other two.

Seeds of Change just seemed to beckon me with it’s pieces of figs, so I went for it.

My God.

My God is all I say.

This is one flippin’ mouthwatering piece of chocolate.

Look at the bits of fig in it:

The whole thing was just perfect.  The texture was divine and I didn’t want the consumption of it to end.  I wanted more when I had finished, so I moved onto my second conquest.

The Chokolit Dark Orange – Biting Back Bar with the pic of the cute chimp on it.  He kinda looks sad…  hmmmm… anyway… 

This chocolate was just beautiful. 

It had the perfect consistency.  I’m no professional taster; I can’t go on about the fruit tones and the flowery essence and all that waffle.  I’m just a simpleton who knows what I like in a bar of chocolate.  I know I like this one.  The texture is perfect.  It’s got a hint of orange, you’d be a pure eejit to miss that cuz it says it on the wrapper too.  It was just another magical experience.

The Mora Mora Bar was consumed on the next evening.

It was a momentous build up…

What an anti-climax.

This was really disappointing.

A glorified Bourneville.

It was hard and plastic-y tasting like Bourneville too.

I wouldn’t recommend it at all.

What a rip off too…

They’re the ‘half measure’ trolley’s.  Well those are the ones that our shopping trolley fits under.  It stores it out of the way so you don’ t have to be carrying it around while you are shopping.  Not many people know of this.  People watched me store it under there too and you could see that they were well impressed with my finding such a storage space for it.

I went over to the stack of trolley’s anyway, I had a pound coin in my hand. 

There was a man putting his back and he was kinda loitering there for longer than it takes. 

He turned to me in a gentlemanly manner and said something along the lines of “Here you go…  here is a trolley for you”  I was feeling a bit dozy and said ”Oh right, so how does this work, I give you the pound and you give me the trolley” and he said “you can give it to me for 50 pence if you like as it’s second hand” I laughed then and he smiled at me, I felt a connection with the man, as he too was Irish. 

I looked at him as he walked away across the zebra crossing and out of my life.  

I just kind of studied him for a split second, the way you do when you have an interaction with someone for the first time, you kinda take them in, don’t ya?  You kinda make a judgement about them based on the way the hold themselves in their skin, their clothes, their walk and their shoes…  you can tell a whole lot by someone’s choice of shoes. 

I snapped out of that anyway and got on with my grocery shopping.  I bought this lot with my money:

What you don’t see clearly in the above picture is my little chocolate collection for the week:

I have turned into a terrible chocolate snob altogether.  I spent £9.00 on the chocolate bars in the photograph above.  I never tasted any of them before and wanted to try them out.

I finished my shopping anyway and paid for what i bought.

When i tried to return the trolley to the stack I discovered that the pound coin was jammed in there and it wouldn’t let me take it out.  I swear to God, i was cursing that man.  What a sneak…

When I looked back in hindsight, I remembered that he was attempting to take his coin out of the slot before i came along.  Way down deep inside the bowels of my psyche, there was a part of me that twigged it too, but I never kind of allowed that feeling to surface.  I guess it was an instinct. 

He had a sneaky way about him too and he palmed it off on me, that gammy trolley.  He ripped me off… So out of principal, I decided to queue up at Customer Services to get my pound back.  I was waiting in line for about twenty minutes.  For all of those twenty minutes I was seething.  I was thinking evil thoughts about that man and was also thinking how strange it was that i walked into that situation all knowing.  There was a part of me that knew exactly what was happening… and that intrigued me. 

There was a Greek lady with a moustache in the queue in front of me. 

She turned around and we had a brief two way conversation about city life and she said she has been living next door to the same neighbours for twenty five years and she doesn’t know them and in Greece it isn’t like that.  The conversation then went into a one-way conversation and I just kept saying “yeah… yeah…. yeah….” but couldn’t tell you what she was saying, she was kinda hard to understand anyway. 

I wasn’t in the mood for chit chat.  I just wanted my pound back…

The blog writer was living in Spain and he was writing in praise of his shopping trolley.  This all happened a week before Joe’s birthday so I thought that it would be great to get him one for our grocery shopping trips.  They’re really handy like…

Yeah, shopping trolleys are so under-rated.

I couldn’t find the spanish shopping trolley anywhere anyway, which was disappointing as I really wanted that particular one – I mean, I really wanted to buy it for Joe.  I even contacted the blog writer but he chose not to reply to my query.

After hours and hours of googling, I decided to settle for this one:

I bought it online and it arrived on Joe’s Birthday… 

…And oh my God!  It is a HUGE thing, I’d be able to jump into it myself!  It comes up to my waist and I’d be half scandalised going grocery shopping with that thing!

It’s proper old lady style. 

I brought it to the supermarket today to give it a test drive. 

I think I must be London’s youngest old age pensioner…!

It serves me right for getting him something that I wanted for myself…

Anyway, I went in and scanned the aisles for some peppercorns. 

I gave up in the search and decided to ask the fella with the white coat.  It’s unlike me to ask, I usually circle round and round til I find what I need and it’s only when I have thoroughly exhausted this search do I approach the men in white coats.  Anyway, on this occasion I musta waltzed around the aisles enough to make me dizzy.  So I say to yer man “excuse me, do ye have any peppercorns?”

Yer man opens his mouth and goes “ah!” as he strides longleggedly round the corner, I follow him and he leads me to the popcorn. 

“Eh, that’s popcorn, I asked for peppercorns?”

“Aaaaaah” he says with more passion this time and strides off out the front door of the shop… 

“Where are you taking me now?” I asked him.  “I don’t think ye’d be keeping the peppercorns outside”

He leads me to the row of fresh peppers and looks at me as if he has given birth to them or something…

“Eh YEAH… they are peppers…  I asked you for peppercorns…”

Now he slows down and kinda gives me a puzzling look. 

I soften and explain that I am looking for the other half of the salt&pepper pair, but in it’s whole form, before you do the grindy grindy thing”

“You want salt?”

“No, I want it’s long lost brother – Pepper”

“Oh Ok, yes, we don’t have/that will be delivered on Friday”

“I don’t think it’ll be delivered on Friday, I think you don’t understand me and you’re brushing me under the It-will-be-delivered-on-Friday rug” I said to a misunderstanding face.

So I leave him to his confusion and approach another white coat.

“Excuse me, do you speak English?”

“Yes, yes!” he says in broken English, but I make a mental note to give him a chance before I bollick him.

Do you have any peppercorns?…

On Saturday Night I purchased SimCity Online at a MegaOnline Corporate E-Store (EA Store).  I downloaded it anyway and started playing it away happily.

I was in my glory, building houses & playing Ruler of the City.  I had built an incredible city where all my Sims were ecstatic and I had millions in the bank, when the floggin’ thing crashes on me.  Fair enough, you expect it to happen now and then, but it proceeded to crash every 10 minutes thereafter.  I was so fed up with it that I went online to see if I could get a refund, the website said I was entitled to a refund up to a month after purchase, great stuff. 

So I click onto the Customer Service Area of the Site.  I click on the Request a refund link, it doesn’t work, it brings me back to the Home Page, repeatedly, every time I tried this, I got more and more frustrated. 

I click on the Contact Us tab, it asks me for my User Name, eh, I wasn’t provided with a User Name nor did I create one when I opened the account the previous day.

So I click on “Request a reminder for your User Name” and I get an email which should give me it.  I open up the email and it thanks me for being a valued customer, and goes on to say, here is your User Name:   

-     Followed by a blank!

Ah you’re taking the piss now.

I really couldn’t believe what was unravelling before my very eyes.   I respond to the email like an Anti-Christ saying something like gimme the god damn User Name wilya?  And I get an immediate response saying:

“Greetings,

The e-mail address you have written to is unable to receive incoming messages. Your response is important to us……” blah blah blah

So I desperately comb the website for a phone number of any kind.  No joy!  Can you believe it? 

At this point it’s the early hours of the morning and I am way too wound up to go to sleep.  I was knackered at work today because I only got 4 and three-quarters hours sleep because of this. 

So I start googling options to try to find the floggin’ number, I then discover to my horror that I am not alone, half the nation are on forums foaming at the mouth because of this company. 

I swear ta God, I am taking this all the way.  I am not letting them get away with this…