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…

  

Once my driving instructor told me that she was teaching this very holy Muslim girl how to drive. When it came to do her test, she got the day off work and went to the test centre only to be told that her test was cancelled. She was completely unphased by it.

The Driving Instructor said “Jeez that’s an awful pain it was cancelled isn’t it?” and she said “Nah, It’s what Allah wanted”…
That story always stuck with me for some reason… 
It’s quite a calm way to think…  Like anytime anything went wrong or didn’t go ‘my way’, I could just say “Allah wants it that way…”
Well I hope Allah wants what I want…  Ay there’s the rub, methinks…
Hmmmm….

So I peddled into East Dulwich cuz I really felt like a fat juicy fish burger laced in that tangy mayonnaise and some bendy chips with tomato sauce. 

I went to a classy joint called “Favorite”.

Here it is:

-for what they call the Fishwich… mmmmm!  Pure Grease-Ball Material I know…

In keeping with my food, my hair was dead greasy and my clothes were mouldy.

I looked at the seating while I was at the counter and carefully planned my position of eating.  I decided I was going to sit with my back to the window and eat as privately as possible cuz it’s a fish bowl of a place and I’d be scandalised if I was spotted by someone I know!

I was up at the counter anyway, ordering the grub when this whipper-snapper comes in through the door.  He struck me as being a jockey in his build, a jockey of the urban kind though, the kind that has never set foot in a field.

So yer man orders grub in a cross between an Irish & an English accent. 

The Pakistani behind the counter takes his twenty pound note and started to scrutinize it; holding it up to the light and squinting. 

Then he produces his super magic marker and proceeds to scribble over the twenty pound note.  The marker doesn’t work, maybe it’s not supposed to, I don’t know but the Pakistani isn’t satisfied with it anyway and decides to operate on the twenty pound note.  He starts to rip the top bit where the foil strip is and then the bottom part where the foil strip ends.  He is still not satisfied with it’s authenticity and the jockey is getting visibly agitated. 

The jockey takes out an almerciful wad of £20 notes from his back pocket and tries to convince the Pakistani that all his twenties are the same.  While he does so, I notice he has a rake of tattoos; a swallow and some random illegible words & letters.

The Pakistani takes another few twenties from the Jockey and between the jigs and the reels they lose track of how many £20 notes have changed hands and the Jockey thinks the Pakistani has one too many of his twenties and this is going on as I am handed my fish burger. 

I sink my teeth into the soft burger bun, the top of it lovingly clinging to the roof of my mouth, as the Jockey’s blood level rises.

The Pakistani decides that he’s not going to accept the Jockey’s money and hands the original twenty back to him.  It’s all ripped and dishevelled and only half of it’s former self.

At this point, the Jockey flips his ABSOLUTE LID!!!

He rises up on his tippy toes & does all these high follutin’ jerky movements & points his finger while shouting all sorts of profanities.  He threatens to climb over the counter and give him a few slaps.  He tells the Pakistani to remember his face because the next time he sees it he will be chopping him up into tiny pieces.  The Pakistani is giving him lip back – Barking away… I’m caught in the crossfire chewing the cud.

The Jockey asked the Pakistani what time he was due to finish.  The Pakistani tells him and they agree Shakespearian style to meet and take this issue out into the night.

The Jockey tells him to make the most of his last few hours of life because he won’t see tomorrow.

I finish up my chips and head off home; hoping that I won’t be on Crime Watch the next night with my greasy hair and my terrible eating habits.

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…

Look into my fridge, no prizes for guessing which shelf is mine…

I didn’t have any money.  But I thought If I bought a loaf of bread I could bring an egg sandwich into work with me.  And a loaf a bread wouldn’t break the bank.

This was Good thinking…

I bolt down to the shop anyway to find it closed.  Blast it! I figure it’ll open in ten minutes (7:00am) so I run back to my flat to make a cuppa cha n do stuff.

So before I go out to the shop again at 7:00am, I decide to use my time wisely & put the egg into a saucepan in preparation for this egg sandwich. 

Being tied for time, I legged it to the shop again.  Twas open, so I go in only to find that they’re out of bread.  Blast it anyway – I grab a pack of pitta bread instead and make my way back to the flat.  When I reach the front door & look for the keys I realise they are not with me.  Now one might argue at this point that it’s not a problem and you’ll be thinking “ah shur, just ring the bell and the flatmates will come down and letchya in” – but those of you who know me & who have been to my flat know only too well that the door bell doesn’t work (even if it did, we wouldn’t answer it).  We don’t answer the phone either.  One time the fire alarm went off downstairs at about 4:00am in the morning and no one bothered to get out of bed to investigate. 

So I thumped on the door anyway, full blasht.  The flatmates were conked out in their beds two floors up…  Zzzzzz

No answer.  Didn’t have my phone on me either to ring Bob London & tell him to let me in.  I was screwed and me last egg was on it’s last legs boiling away in the saucepan inside.  I decided to fill my lungs with air and give a good shout inta the letterbox.  I let out an almerciful yelp that resounded around the neighbourhood.  I was in luck & was let in so I could tend to me darling egg.  The poor unfortunate thing was sitting in steam when I rounded the corner. 

After the egg was tended to, I ransack the place looking for my keys…  no where to be found.  I borrow my flat mates keys and run back to the shop to see if I left them in there.  Low and behold they were on the counter.  Race back to my flat.

At this stage, I was officially running late.  I slit open the pitta bread only to find a mouldy piece of pitta looking out at me. 

Feck! 

Back to the shop again – visit numero four-o in the space of a half an hour – scandalised!  Yer manno must a thought I had the hots for him.  Anyway, I swap pitta’s with him & run back to the flat.  May I just point out that I’m sweating like a paedo in a playground at this point. 

I make my sambo & glance at the clock…

shock horror! Look at the time & I’ve to be at work at 8:00am and it’s a serious cycling distance from where I am standing! 

Grab me helmet & me bike & cycle like Stephen Roche to work only to get there and realise that I forgot my egg sandwich!