What makes you happy ?

So the last of the daytime shopping has been done. Two midnight trips left. After much hunting for something we wanted to get the girls it came down to one place and one place only – PC World. I did the payment online, checked that it really really was definitely there. Went in.
Girl at the desk confirmed the model – there are 2, and I know precisely the one I wanted. She seemed to have clue. She takes a note to a muppet – who promptly goes to the back to presumably find something broken to shove in the box. He brings the items out. Wrong model. The boxes have obviously been opened – he claimed they were brand new, just arrived, not even been checked. I make a big deal out of checking the boxes, the models. The muppet takes them back. I pay at the till and muppet returns. This time the boxes are pristine. Not a crease on the opening part. In the car I check and the items appear to be perfectly wrapped inside. So thankfully this time PC World didn’t get to sell me a dead item.

I hate, loathe and detest the place for any number of reasons and I tried really hard to need to not go there, but this time I had to. There was no other option. Strangely, yesterday when passing I popped in and said “Do you have any of these” and gave him a full description. He said no, never heard of them. And yet they sell them. So there’s one lazy muppet already.

Anyway, the girls should be happy and yes I’ll be keeping every single bit of the wrapping, even the cable ties.

Early evening last night I realised that Metroid 3 for the Wii was out. And I had forgotten (see, I get so wrapped up in work!) and I said to J that tomorrow I would be going town to buy it. I then tuned back into work mode.
Some years ago I read a book called “Why men don’t listen and women can’t read maps‘. This really is an amazing book. So much so that if you see it, buy it. Just get it. I promise you will not feel the money is wasted. It has saved so many arguments and given us (this includes my daughters) so much insight into how we (Man/Woman) operate that the book is gold. One such thing explained is called “The butter is in the fridge”. I will ask where something is and I’ll be told (for instance) it’s in the fridge. I’ll look and say it’s not there. I’ll be told that yes, it is and I should look properly. Again I look and yet again I state categorically that the item is not, repeat not, in the fridge. As this point one of the ladies in the house will open the fridge in front of me and take out the item – which could well have been on the front of a shelf. This used to irritate them hugely. “Are you blind or what” (No) “Why don’t you look properly?” (I did!) “You just wanted to annoy me by making me get up and come this way to get it for you didn’t you” (No, I really don’t need the grief) and this book explains that this is typical Man behaviour. It’s not my fault. It’s The Way It Is.
Now J used to come in from work and would then rabbit on and on and on about her day, who did what, when they did it, what someone didn’t do, what was said to who about who etc etc. Used to drive me nuts – every day this happened and I never did this. Work was work, it happened elsewhere and stayed elsewhere. In the end when she walked in, I tuned out. Later she could say “Remember I told you..” to which I would have to reply “Yes of course my dear!….” though she eventually realised I was not listening and that irritated her. Another thing that still drives me nuts is ‘Woman Speak”. Example: Man is out and he damages the car. He enters the house and says “I damaged the car, bloody idiots on the road, if I could catch him, it’ll cost me a packet”. This succinctly conveys that the car is damaged, it was not his fault, he is angry at the other person and he didn’t want to have to spend the money. Now, here is the Woman version: She enters the house, “You’ll never guess what happened. I’d just come out of the shop and – did I say I met so-and-so in there? haven’t seen her for ages. Well she’s dumped the guy she was with and she’s hooked up with that guy you used to play football with – why don’t you play any more? You really should you know – anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I wish you would out the mirror back as I like it in the car after you have used it. I got to the car ……” and sometime later she mentions that the car hit something. When J did this it used to really drive me crackers. Inside of me there would be a little person screaming “Get to the point dammit!!”. But because of that book I know understand that this is a Woman thing and She Cannot Help It. So I take deep breaths. I tried saying “Yes yes but what’s the end of this? What’s the point” Where is the result?” to which she would say “No, you won’t understand, you need to know all this”. Like hell I did.
Back to the droning on she used to do when she came back from work. The book mentioned trigger words that would cause the Man to stop ignoring and immediately tune in. Like when in a room someone whispers your name. We worked out that I had at least one trigger word – sex. If J said that I was all ears. This was very effective. No matter how tuned in to the task I was, the mention of that word get her attention. It was that effective that the girls would use that word when I seemed to be ignoring them – which I wasn’t, it was a tuning thing. Metroid. So I’d said to J that I’d be going town and I was soon back reading, replying and fixing. At some point while talking to P (who has just had her hair straightened and she looks fab) J said “Tesco”. I have no idea why but that word tuned me back in. I leant back to look around the corner and said that it was open 24 hours and that we should go there right now because they sell Wii games. This was about 10pm. I then tuned back into work again thinking my words would be useless. But P then said she needed some “hair stuff” and J wanted some Jelly babies. So off we went.
Tesco is a sane place at 11:15pm. Hardly anyone around, no rushing, no distractions, security are too busy watching some drunk lads coming into buy beer and I could actually go in straight lines between the parts of the store I needed. Very nice. Last year we started shopping in the very late/early hours because of this. Saves so much hassle. So I bought Metroid, P got hair bobbles and bread to take to feed the ducks today and J got her Jelly babies.

(I have News 24 streaming on the PC. Has anyone noticed they are using a sample of Bejewelled music in the summaries?)

Go buy that book. And I will hope that Tesco has not replaced sex in my life.

All in a single trip to Tesco. I look fairly reasonable these days. Gone is the shaved head, gone are the facial piercings, gone is most of the attitude I used to carry with me. So for the second week running being followed around Tesco by Security was annoying. Watched while checking out the video games, while in the toiletries section, watched as I deliberately went back through the store to see if I was being watched. Going to the tills and finding 1 security guy quite close, another a couple of lines away. Noticing too that the lady at the till caught the eye of the guard.
I accidentally bumped the guy unloading his stuff onto the conveyor. He turns around and says that there are a lot of letterboxes around today. I had no clue what he was on about as I briefly glanced around. He can tell that I’m lost, so he nods in a direction and says “black letterboxes”. I then see what the fool is on about – some ladies are wearing a niqab. (Apologies for the incorrect spelling). I started ignoring him – I have no place for garbage like that. His 2 kids ask him about these ladies. He tells them to never ever ever talk to them or touch them, that they are really wrong, that they’ll mess with their heads. Nice dad they don’t have.
Back at the car I have the boot open while loading stuff in. Because the wheelchair is in there I also have the side door open. 2 open doors, 1 trolley full of shopping. A girl – about 12 I think – comes through the cars on the other side of the carpark road.
“Hey mister, are yer gay?”
“What?”
“Are yer gay? Me mate says yer gay” and she points down the carpark behind me. She’s still walking toward me and has not stopped actually looking at me, even while pointing.
“No I’m not”
“Well he says yer gay so ya must be gay”. She’s still pointing and she walks right past me – again she never broke her stare at me. She sends a volley of abuse at me once safely past me.
I am totally certain that if I had turned and looked then part of the shopping would have been grabbed.

Tesco at Beaumont Leys – all the reasons you need to buy online.

There’s a field that I walk Winston past every day. The herd of cattle in there when presented with their food has more decorum than the whole of Primark in Leicester.

I had to buy a school top for P and the schoolwear shop suggested Primark in the city centre. Never again will I enter that place. There were clothes strewn over the displays and on the floor. There seemed to be no staff keeping anything tidy. Rows of hanging clothes were messy with hangers jutting out, clothes casually tossed over the top. The displays that presumably started the day nicely folded were messed up and dirty. (There’s this thing in clothes shops that is they present clothing in neat folded piles you are more likely to purchase if you have removed something from a pile because you won’t want to put it back. In this case it failed massively). The whole shop reeked of neglect. The shoppers seemed to not care but the environment was truly dire – did they cause the place to be a mess or were they a product of their environment? Who knows? As a shopper, who cares? I’ve never seen a shop so fantastically untidy and with staff not even trying to make it better. If I’d told a bunch of kids to run through and ruin the place it could not have been as bad as what I saw. It may be cheap but even so the person running that place should get a clue and make their staff actually work. And it was a weekday. At least I will never have to go in there again – it is one of those experiences that I never want to repeat.

Shoplifting cost the economy £2bn last year, the BRC say.
And each individual paid an extra £90 in increased prices to compensate for it. Link

Crap.
Shoplifting cost shoppers 90 quid. The economy is a faceless entity that has GDP and other terms that mean nothing to us in our day-to-day reality. Sure it does affect things but in a mass effect way. The use of the word here implies it hurts everyone now so we should really care. Crap.
Look at the second sentence – And each individual paid an extra £90 in increased prices to compensate for it. Let’s translate that: “And the companies still want to make a fat profit so they pass the cost onto their shoppers so their bottom line does not get hit”. Now if shoplifting were eradicated today we all know prices would not drop by even a penny because the companies would then take that 90 quid as even more of a fat profit. So either way, we – shoppers – get screwed.
So do I care about shoplifting? Not a bit. No. In fact – if shoplifting were eradicated then places like Tesco wouldn’t need all their security staff – so they would lay them off. That would increase unemployment. Shoplifting does have some social benefits then.

Mobile phone theft? 36% shop staff.

And while I’m on about prices, in 2005 there were protests about the prices of petrol and the proposed increase of 1.5p. Here we are not 2 years later, the price has risen over 20p a litre and no-one says a thing. Why?

In Argos, I get to the till to pay £9.99 for an alarm clock:
“Would you like 3 years accidental breakdown cover sir at only £1.49 per year?”
Bizarre, utterly bizarre.

My existing Swatch Skin has no problems both in working and appearance but it’s a slightly brushed metal face with metal hands – and that can prove difficult to see both in the day and at night. Annoying at times.

This Swatch Pure Black looks like it’ll do the job. Still thin and light but with less added squint from me. The material strap I may well not like – I hate straps that feel sticky like leather/plastic can – but that is easily sorted.

Swatch Skin – superb watches. None of the big clunky stuff with lots of buttons, dials, bezels and whatever else they can jam into that little space. It’s a watch, it tells the time and that’s all I want it to do.

Does a big watch indicate an inadequacy (real or imagined) elsewhere? Discuss :)

Enter shop
Walk directly to “Men size 11″ section
See shoes
Try one on
Purchase.
Took all of …. hmm…5 minutes?

The trainers I’d been wearing to the gym were ancient and had seen much better days, hence the expedition to buy “non-shiny stuff”. I debated buying some white/light grey trainers but they not only make me feet look huge but they look new too. Can’t be doing with looking ‘box fresh’ in the gym. Brings back memories of the first day back at school after the holidays and the new pens, new jacket, new shirt, new hopes…….. so I can’t be doing with looking so sparkly. Maybe I should join the dull men’s club :) I bought some hi-tec ‘adventure travel’ despite me planning on having no adventures and no extra travel (though J has planned something on that front). They’ll do for the gym though.

And I think my girls must be close to getting pressure sores. I blame Nintendo :)

Just as the bus gets to the outskirts of town there is a short row of buildings, some of which are shops. In the 23 years I’ve been in this city one has not changed (amazingly), one of the others has changed twice and the other 5 or 6 seem to change almost yearly. I noticed that on the way in so while wandering I looked a bit more closely at shops. Apart from obvious rebuilding and what I think would be normal ‘turnover’ of premises there was nothing odd. I went down another street (I wasn’t exploring – there was a shop I wanted to check anyway) and again I saw the same effect – shops that just can’t seem to keep an identity.
Behind each one of course is the ‘human story’ but what puzzled me was the optimism. Someone buying a business you would think will have checked the property, seen it’s history, checked the businesses close by, looked at shopping patterns, talked to owners about passing trade – in other words they’ll have done their homework. But they haven’t. It cannot be the same reason for all the same businesses to fold can it? Do estate agents see these people coming? I suppose they do – their ‘lies’ + the optimism of the ‘soon to be a business owner’ must equate to a guaranteed commission – and do they mentally note the next commission for the very same sale?
There’s a difference between “Come on, let me have a go” when you are talking about wiring something or doing a crossword and the “I’ll be a millionaire this time next year”. Optimism.. it’s a wonderful thing. Shame reality pops that bubble though …..