There’s no reason for anybody to believe this, but I bought an enormous packet of strawberry bon bons¹ today, completely by accident. They were hanging over the supermarket conveyor belt, and something tall must have knocked them into my shopping. Actual accidental purchasing of bon-bons! Who am I to argue with fate? Nom nom nom.

1. incidentally, there are only so many times you can type ‘bon bon’ before the words start to look really weird [↩]

Had a moral failing in Somerfield just now. An elderly lady in the checkout queue was badly insulted by some evil woman, for no good reason, and although not deeply upsetting it was probably enough to spoil her afternoon. It happened too quickly for me to get involved at the time and be sure I understood the situation - evil woman promptly buggered off - but after it became clear I left it to the checkout girl to provide moral support. I was next in line, thinking ‘that was bloody unreasonable’ but acting like one of the faceless crowd, which probably only added to the poor lady’s embarrassment. Bad. I think another voice would have helped.

Good job I didn’t bump into that woman on the way home; I was fuming the whole way.

Grrr. One for the list of Situations to Get Right Next Time.

I’ve made some silly mistakes when ordering stuff over the Internet, but this afternoon I messed up in a frankly ridiculous manner.

I was ordering some gear from eBuyer, and paying through Google Checkout. I’ve done this plenty of times before, but was particularly excited as I’m finally, finally replacing my never-worked-since-I-got-them motherboard and CPU. My final kit selection had been worked on for days, and I’d checked the cart many times to ensure I’d added the correct items. I knew that if the order went through smoothly they’d be posted for next-day-delivery, which, being an impatient sort of chap, I wanted. So I completed the process and eBuyer confirmed they were waiting for Google to authorise payment. Google emailed me five minutes later to say my credit card had been declined and the order had been suspended.

Damn. I assumed the transaction was hitting not-usual-spending-pattern security flags, so the thing to do was phone my bank - Smile. I needed to fix the problem then tell GC to re-check my card, so I brought up GC’s transaction page. I grabbed the phone and tried to look up smile’s customer service number, but their help pages were down for maintenance, although I could still log into my account. I switched back to GC while searching the back of my credit card for hints, and in the process somehow dropped the phone.

It hit the keyboard, specifically the Enter key, thereby selecting whatever was focussed on-screen, which happened to be the ‘Cancel Order’ button.

Quite impressive, really. GC and eBuyer both emailed within seconds to confirm the cancellation and tell me not to worry - there was no way I’d be charged or the order would be retained. And that was that. Obviously it’s no big deal, but the elegance and speed of the operation were dazzling.

I ordered again, using a different credit card, and GC + eBuyer paused just long enough to make me think I’d confused the hell out of the system, but eventually accepted the order. It’s now with City Link and should be arrive tomorrow, although I’m a little concerned the fates may be against me.

Every year this happens. I reckon it’s statistically more likely at Christmas. Here’s how it is:

1. You’re walking around in the cold.
2. You head into a shop, knowing it won’t take long as you’re after a particular item.
3. You queue, unaware that the shop’s air conditioning is slowly melting tiny mucus icicles - mucicles - and get to the till at precisely the same moment as the first ticklings of incoming snot.
4. You’re handing over books, typing in pins, confirming that you would indeed like the receipt in the bag, not being the kind of person who hands over Christmas presents still in the bag, all the while judging whether you’ll need to dive for a tissue and annoy everyone in the queue whilst disgusting the pretty assistant who could very possibly be the future mother of your children¹ if only you don’t turn into Colonel Boge of Bogington Vasey and flood the shop.
5. The Race of Snot is generally won or lost by how long the credit card takes to verify. Thankfully most shops are in full-on assembly-line mode at this time of year, so it’s efficient as hell and I personally am generally victorious.

This is worse atm, as I have a cold. Not fair. I did the whole cold thing last month - it was meant to be out of the way! I actually feel fine, but sound terrible and leak a lot, so appear remarkably unconvincing when trying to talk people into spending time with me. Have a big Christmas party tomorrow; hoping I’ll be a little better in the morning, as infecting all my friends four days before Christmas might not go down well.

1. obviously I am not thinking this, I am generalizing in a scientific manner [↩]

Buying Christmas decorations on your own is no fun. I always forget this until I’m actually there, though, and this afternoon I headed to Notcutts to pick up a tree. I usually treat myself to £10 worth of decorations too. For years they’ve had an enormous room full of trees, lights and sparkle, and I always look forward to walking around it, alone or not - it’s just a pleasant experience.

Unfortunately this year it was like an Edgar Allen Poe Christmas nightmare. Not because of crowds, but because of the sounds. It started with the background music, which was repetitive and quiet - all you could hear was a regular chick beat. But not in a nice way - it was like music from a thriller, as the heroine is creeping down a dark corridor, looking for the intruder. It set you on edge immediately.

Then there was the ringing. Oh god, the ringing. Something, somewhere, was making what was probably intended as a festive trill, but it sounded like an unanswered phone. I counted, and it was ringing about three times every two seconds. When I have nightmares they’re always heavy on endless repetition - it’s just something I dislike. And it never stopped.

I could maybe have ignored the ringing and the music, but then came the tunes. A group of ornaments contained little village scenes in glass domes under which snow was regularly sprayed upwards while some easily recognisable midi carol played. But all of the ornaments were playing at once, so four different tunes in four different keys intertwined in a horrible mixture of tunes just-comprehensible-enough-to-be-recognisable while simultaneously merging into something awful. You could imagine it being the chaotic, atonal soundtrack to a scene where Santa goes mad as a wide-angle lens 20cm from his face spins as he reels around a workshop of broken dreams. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

But that wasn’t all. Another display contained a revolving carousel on an ice-rink. Every few minutes the children on board would yell in delight. On its own it would have been fine, but with the atmosphere of everything else in the room the children were simply screaming. It was like some fairytale hell.

And then, finally, I saw this:

Is it my brain, or has Santa has hung himself from a Christmas tree?

I picked out some baubles, found a baby tree and got the hell out of there. Ugh.

I ordered a replacement laptop hard drive last week, but accidentally clicked an SATA version rather than IDE. I only discovered this after opening the packaging, and as I needed the drive that day I was forced to visit the local computer shop. They had an IDE drive in stock:

Ebuyer price: £39.02
Local shop: £116.33

I appreciate they have more overheads, but that’s just stupid. Didn’t have any choice at the time, unfortunately, and it’s obviously unfair to pass my muppetry on to the client. Won’t make that mistake again.

Today I remembered to buy salt while in Tesco. It only took three months. I know people were on tenterhooks about this.

I have had no salt for a couple of months. I don’t know how anybody has salt. Nobody remembers, in the middle of Tesco, that they need salt. Other than people who’ve made lists, obviously. But that’s cheating. Far more fun to get home and realise that yet again you slipped into the fluorescent netherworld befuddle bubble, and although you’ve got bacon, which you never eat, and chicken sauce, which you’ve got nine of already, the concept of salt was lost to you for those forty minutes. This was me last week:

• 1100: Right. Today shall be different. I’ll be in and out. Quickly. No worries.
• 1105: Did that announcer just say ‘good morning customers?’. Shall I shout ‘ho-de-ho’? Better not. Why is that person giving me a funny look?
• 1110: There are many people in front of the bananas. I’ll loop around the salads and come back.
• 1111: Strawberries! No. Mustn’t.
• 1112: Are those…the same people? The same people? HOW LONG CAN IT TAKE TO CHOOSE BANANAS?!

You know how irritating it is when the person ahead of you decides to pay by cheque / forgets their pin / can’t find their wallet? A while back I started counting how long these procedures actually took. I reckon it rarely adds more than twenty seconds. I had the same thing with Hettie the arrival-time-predicting sat-nav: traffic-jams that seemed to take hours to clear only added three minutes to the journey. I’ve decided I can’t be bothered getting annoyed at ‘wasting’ anything less than fifteen minutes, and it’s impressive how much calmer my day becomes.

I realised at 2200 that I was out of milk, and on the spur of the moment decided to do the full fortnightly shop at Tesco. An hour later and everything’s packed away! It’s amazing! The shop was practically devoid of customers, and there were only a few re-stocking trollies to weave around. They had everything I needed bar Rice Krispies and Pop Tarts (I’d forgotten about Pop Tarts until impulsively buying some last time, and am now addicted), and it was also pleasant to be able to um and ah over things without eighteen people hovering at my shoulder. I rarely feel sleepy before 0100 these days, so I’m definitely going to do this more often

In Tesco this morning, a passing woman gave me a sly sideways glance and said ‘I saw that’. I don’t know what I did. As far as I remember, I was deciding between brands of chicken pie. Maybe I committed some major faux pas of which I’m not even aware. Like ‘thou must not dally in front of freezers on a Monday’ or something. Or maybe it’s a secret one, created purely to confuse young men. That’ll be it.

Walking around during the football was undeniably quieter, but there were still a fair few people: mostly young women and older couples. I heard the occasional distant roar, and ‘yes!’s from people lying in the park with radios. There was this guy, too:

Sorry about the quality. It wasn’t that great anyway, but certainly better than YouTube’s compression would suggest.

My cunning plan regarding going to the supermarket was flawed: they had no staff.

The match has just finished, I think, and the church bells are ringing!

I just ducked into HMV to avoid a rainshower - didn’t buy anything, woo! - and was looking at the ‘children’s’ DVD section. As with anything for ‘children’, once the intended age passes ten or so the content becomes equally accessible to all ages. In fact I think that books and films for ‘young adults’ are on average more entertaining than those for the older generation, as they can’t rely on sex / violence to provide plot points, and the story is more thoughtful because of it. There are plenty of films I loved when I was a kid that I still find fantastic. I’d be happy to buy them on DVD, except there’s a problem, and it’s called Disney.

It used to be the case that you would never find the official DVD logo on Disney DVDs. There was a Mickey-Mouse ‘Disney DVD’ logo, but that was all. This was because they would do all sorts of fancy effects with the DVD menus. Some (mostly older, very low-end) DVD players would have trouble playing them, but Disney were covered because they never actually claimed it was a proper DVD. Whether this still happens, I don’t know. I don’t have any Disney DVDs because, and this is my main complaint, the prices are crazy.

The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, The Lion King, The Emperor’s New Groove, Pinocchio…none of these can be bought for under £19. That may have been reasonable when every other film on the shelf was a similar price, but things have changed. If I want a DVD on release day then I’ll pay £20, but if I’m happy to wait a month or three then the price will normally drop substantially. The thing is, you can’t wait for Disney DVD prices to drop, because they actually are ‘Limited Edition’. Try to buy my favourite animation of all time - Aladdin - on DVD today and you won’t be able to without getting it used or from an Amazon Marketplace supplier who still has stock. Disney just stopped making it. Bastards.

Disney are in the business of making people happy, their films are beloved by millions, yet they screw people for all the money they can get. It’s such a shame.

Because I never write anything down when I run out of it, going to the supermarket normally means walking along every aisle and picking up whatever I need. This works ok, except that I see all sorts of products I wouldn’t otherwise. My inner dialogue then runs something like this:

Hmm, vitamin pills. Well, I always used to take them. But I seem to remember that their actual health benefits are minimal, and they are £1.50, so maybe I won’t.

Which is fine, except that I then see the coffee.

Hmmm, coffee. I don’t drink coffee. That’s saved the money for the vitamin pills then - into the trolley they go.

I’m such a muppet.

Sure, I’ve thrown away various items of clothing recently, and haven’t replaced them. I also need to do something about the rather dodgy boiler. Some things, though, are just too important:

A couple of days ago I was asked to pick up a reserved item from the local Argos. I was in town anyway retrieving a parcel¹ from the post office and while I was in Argos I bought a cheap guitar stand. It was only when the two new boxes arrived that I realised getting them all home would be tricky. One was particularly heavy, and I needed both arms for it. In the end the only method that worked was balancing them on top of each other and holding them underneath. I could just about see over the top, but the long-thin guitar stand stuck out to each side, so I had to navigate carefully around people. This worked well for a few hundred metres, before my arms began to get tired and I stopped at a fence to have a rest. At this point a little-old-lady² asked if I was ok, and did I need any help? I declined but thanked her very much. I was impressed that somebody would do that!

Took down all the decorations this afternoon Flat looks boring without them…I may print off and hang some photos to make up for it. I received a leaflet saying it’s fine to put christmas trees into the ‘garden waste’ bins out the back, so that was nice and easy.

I haven’t seen the last three episodes of Lost, and I know the season finale must be pretty close now³. I’m hoping to get copies of the episodes soon, as it’d be such a shame to hear spoilers now having lasted so long!

Lil and Tom came around this morning, which was pleasant. I think I babble excessively when people are here, mind. Hopefully they had a good day walking around town.

Dancing tonight, where we’ve been promised new steps in the jive. That’s still my favourite, although cha-cha is a close second now.

1. and most exciting it was, too - thanks again, L! [↩]
2. not being insulting - that’s what she was! [↩]
3. if it wasn’t last night, that is [↩]