We had decided upon a trip to the shopping centre today to finish the party shopping for Sunday’s Picnic to celebrate our little girl’s first birthday. I wanted Sainsbury’s, so we parked in the car park next to Sainsbury’s, struggled in the rain with a sleeping toddler out of the car seat and into the buggy and went inside to shop.
Armed with my trusty shopping list and a heart infused with a mixture of enthusiasm, expectation and hope I browsed the isles looking for the remaining ingredients I need to feed about 11 children and umpteen adults for an afternoon. Sainsbury’s didn’t have everything I wanted so I was forced into the main centre, looking for other options.
I came up with the idea that, although it is over the other side of the complex, ASDA was the way forward, so we headed off in that direction. On the way, our little girl woke up in an amicable mood considering she was restrained and not allowed to run about as she has become fond of doing. ASDA was busy, (probably all disappointed Sainsbury’s shoppers) and, as we had quite a number of things left on our list, we needed a trolley. After hunting around for the trolley token I keep in my purse, we acquired a trolley and perambulated up and down the isles, slowly filling the trolley with all the items that Sainsbury’s didn’t stock. When we got to the checkout we found that we needed the trolley to get all the shopping, plus now one very annoyed and loudly letting us know little girl, and the purchases we had already made from Sainsbury’s back to the car park on the other side of the shopping centre.
We made the trip back accompanied by the usual mix of knowing glances from parents, bemused glances from children, annoyed glances from teenagers and patronising smiles from the elderly as our child made it clear to everyone traveling in the lift with us that she was both bored and hungry and really wanted to be home, running around and playing with her toys.
We got back to the car, loaded up the shopping, got screamer into her carseat and I took the trolley to the trolley park to retrieve my token.
Here’s where the main rant starts and my mind switches from calm and well thought out to someone who has spent the last 8 hours stuck in a lift with Ant & Dec.
The trolley park only takes trolleys from Sainsbury’s customers. I could almost see the smirking grin on the face of whoever thought of this fantastic notion. ‘I’m sorry ASDA pleb, take your tacky little ‘ASDA cheapo’ trolley and get off our property’. I’ve bought stuff from Sainsbury’s...in fact...I parked here specifically FOR Sainsbury’s...and if they’d had what I wanted, I wouldn’t have had to go anywhere other than Sainsbury’s, so really, it’s you own fault if customers are forced to shop elsewhere.
*That smirking face again* I’m sorry, you must take your trolley back in order to retrieve your token.
Ah for Christ’s sake!
All the time, screamer was still telling the world how annoying the lack of freedom and toys was.
Alright, I will go all the way back to ASDA and take the trolley back, retrieve my token and come all the way back again to my car, all the while the frozen food I have bought will be defrosting, my daughter will have shattered every windscreen and set off every car alarm within a 10 mile radius and my husband will probably have been forced to take the drastic decision to drive home without me, just to stop the terrible din from the back seat. And all because you don’t have a little bar with a chain attached and a sign informing ASDA customers that they may deposit their trolleys near to where they parked their cars.
So, back I go, feeling a complete fool pushing an empty shopping trolley back across the complex, down in a lift and all the way over to ASDA.
In this particular shopping centre there are independent vendors who stand in the middle of the walkways who accost you as you go by and try to sell you car insurance, windows, kitchens, sky TV, fill in the blank, and I tend to just look very busy and rush past muttering ‘no thank you’. Today however a man standing in front of a fake double glazed window felt the need to impress upon me the magnitude of my predicament. ‘Oi love, someone’s nicked yer shopping!’.
Git.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Swelling my ego...or possibly tearing my soul
It has never occurred to me to write a blog. I think I woke up on the morn of the technological age with a headache and a grumpy disposition that has lasted from the Amstrad green screen through to the iPod touchscreen and will probably serve me well into the age of the ibod no screen (can I patent that now so that when it becomes a reality I can sue and run away to a forgotten town in Tibet without the fear of being ‘found’ by all the wonderful inventions of this technological dawn? No? Oh well, worth a try eh?)
To me, a blog is a running commentary of your life, set out in pretty prose for others to read and comment on accordingly, thus either fueling a rant inducing inferno within the tattered remnants of your beaten soul or swelling your ego with nods of agreement coupled with the occasional ‘I want your babies’ thrown in for good measure.
However, due to the fact that you are (hopefully) reading my blog, I must have changed my mind and decided that some personal web presence and ego swelling is worth the soul tearing that I am likely to get from all the cyber fish already caught in the net (or would cyber flies caught in the web be a better analogy?) of the great technological dawn.
Each time I hear the words ‘technological dawn’ it reminds me of a fantastic scene from the film Time Bandits (one of my favourite childhood films) in which David Warner's character ‘Evil’ rants on about creating the technological age, a cold age of computers and digital watches. I think this sums up everything I feel about ‘technology’...it’s evil.
There is a famous conspiracy that all technological gadgets have a built in mechanism that determines their life span according to the preferences of the individual manufacturer. In that whatever piece of life saving gadgetry you have bought will invariably break within days of the end of the warranty, thus then forcing you to pay for your own damned repair, or the life of your appliance expiring just in time for the release of the ‘new and improved’ model in the hopes that the consumer is so fed up with all the jibes they get from their ‘hip and withit’ friends that they think ‘what the hell, this things broken anyway, might as well treat myself to a new one’ and splash out on that new model that not only heats water but can also connect to your wifi and automatically update your twitter, myspace and facebook profiles to let everyone know that you are enjoying a lovely hot cup of the beverage of your choice. (OK, can I patent THAT then?).
The main problem I have with technology is that although I would rather live my life without it’s wonderful ‘freedom’ which in itself is a joke, how are you free when with an awe inspiring handbag sized contraption you can be reached even at 3am when you have no idea where you are, what your name is or who in the hell is calling you from a night club in Costa Del Chav to ask you what the weather is like where you are? Or worse the ‘I have no idea I have called you and all you are going to hear is the sound of me pushing a trolley round Sainsbury’s, muffled by the contents of my handbag’ call where no matter how hard you scream down the line they simply can’t hear you and have no idea their phone is on.
Anyway, back to my point. I am very gifted when it comes to technology. If you want something doing with a computer, I will find a way to do it. I have owned, hacked and re-written codes for forums, programmed animated websites with html, php and flash, created flash files programmed with actionscript, taught myself object orientated programming languages (such as C++) and had a go at 3D modeling with Alias’ MAYA programme. I can record and manipulate sound and I can use photoshop properly.
Why is it then that I have no idea how to answer my mobile phone and I have no channels available on my television set.
To me, a blog is a running commentary of your life, set out in pretty prose for others to read and comment on accordingly, thus either fueling a rant inducing inferno within the tattered remnants of your beaten soul or swelling your ego with nods of agreement coupled with the occasional ‘I want your babies’ thrown in for good measure.
However, due to the fact that you are (hopefully) reading my blog, I must have changed my mind and decided that some personal web presence and ego swelling is worth the soul tearing that I am likely to get from all the cyber fish already caught in the net (or would cyber flies caught in the web be a better analogy?) of the great technological dawn.
Each time I hear the words ‘technological dawn’ it reminds me of a fantastic scene from the film Time Bandits (one of my favourite childhood films) in which David Warner's character ‘Evil’ rants on about creating the technological age, a cold age of computers and digital watches. I think this sums up everything I feel about ‘technology’...it’s evil.
There is a famous conspiracy that all technological gadgets have a built in mechanism that determines their life span according to the preferences of the individual manufacturer. In that whatever piece of life saving gadgetry you have bought will invariably break within days of the end of the warranty, thus then forcing you to pay for your own damned repair, or the life of your appliance expiring just in time for the release of the ‘new and improved’ model in the hopes that the consumer is so fed up with all the jibes they get from their ‘hip and withit’ friends that they think ‘what the hell, this things broken anyway, might as well treat myself to a new one’ and splash out on that new model that not only heats water but can also connect to your wifi and automatically update your twitter, myspace and facebook profiles to let everyone know that you are enjoying a lovely hot cup of the beverage of your choice. (OK, can I patent THAT then?).
The main problem I have with technology is that although I would rather live my life without it’s wonderful ‘freedom’ which in itself is a joke, how are you free when with an awe inspiring handbag sized contraption you can be reached even at 3am when you have no idea where you are, what your name is or who in the hell is calling you from a night club in Costa Del Chav to ask you what the weather is like where you are? Or worse the ‘I have no idea I have called you and all you are going to hear is the sound of me pushing a trolley round Sainsbury’s, muffled by the contents of my handbag’ call where no matter how hard you scream down the line they simply can’t hear you and have no idea their phone is on.
Anyway, back to my point. I am very gifted when it comes to technology. If you want something doing with a computer, I will find a way to do it. I have owned, hacked and re-written codes for forums, programmed animated websites with html, php and flash, created flash files programmed with actionscript, taught myself object orientated programming languages (such as C++) and had a go at 3D modeling with Alias’ MAYA programme. I can record and manipulate sound and I can use photoshop properly.
Why is it then that I have no idea how to answer my mobile phone and I have no channels available on my television set.
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