venta

Note for Americans: I live in the UK, where customer service is regarded as (at best) an optional extra.

Today I was in the card shop, Scribbler, buying a birthday card in rather a hurry.

Did I want a bag, asked the lady behind the counter.

No, but I would quite like the loan of a pen if she wouldn't mind.

She didn't mind. She asked if I wanted her to dispose of the card's plastic wrapping, and handed me my unwrapped card with a nice pen and a useful clipboard to provide a flat surface to write on. The clipboard even had an attached bit of paper for practice scribbling.

So hurrah! Well done Scribbler on High Holborn.

Disjointed comments from the recent past...

If you have tropical fruit-related breakfast cereal, it's surprisingly nice with coconut water on it in place of milk. I discovered this totally because of my desire to try out new food combinations, and not even slightly because I am the sort of slack person who'd put cereal in a bowl before remembering we forgot to buy milk.

In a crowd on Sunday I was standing near a gentleman in a quite amazingly hi-tech electric wheelchair. It had expanding struts under the seat and (I think - I didn't see it in action) could be raised and lowered. The upshot being that, in a standing crowd, the chap sitting in it was on eye-level with everyone else. I'm lucky enough never to have had to use a wheelchair, but I imagine having your head a couple of feet lower than the people around you could make it hard to stay in a conversation.

A house on the road I walk down to the station had the top of its garden wall painted last week. It was a brilliant, pristine white. Overnight, it was visited by a fox with extremely muddy paws.

Owing to lack of warning signs, there is now a small patch of concrete on Haven Green with the print of my right boot in it. Converse, size 4, if you're curious.

An issue of burning topical importance:

[Poll #1937072]

Things I saw on my way to work this morning...

A man crouched beside a green junction box, trying to match the diagram on his clipboard to the wires inside. He was wearing a bright yellow plastic headset, clamped over his black turban.

A man striding quickly up the road, a pink lunch bag in one hand and a huge carrier containing a Playmobil box in the other. A little girl in a pink anorak and a cream party dress ran to keep up with him.

A blonde girl on the train, asleep with her arm curled round her partner and a huge smile on her face.

An immensely cheerful man with gingery hair, fighting with the ticket barriers before declaring "Ah! It's the green arrow that it gives it away."


As I cycled up Whiteknights Road, the rain brought an unexpected waft of wild garlic with it. A police car with blacked-out windows passed me, ferocious barking coming from within.

Sunday turned into a day of Doing Things this weekend. Sadly, as is always the way, not quite as many Things got Done as I'd hoped.

ChrisC had also noticed the date and insisted we celebrate St Patrick's day. So we soundtracked our day with Irish bands. We stumbled dazedly round the flat to Whipping Boy, got ourselves in order to the Frankenwalters, accompanied the trip to the tip with the Sultans of Ping F.C., recovered with cake and Divine Comedy, indulged in extravagant bouts of cleaning to the Stiff Little Fingers and ultimately sat down to roast beef with Catchers and The Cranberries.

( Cleaning. Aargh. )

Things I saw on my way to work this morning...

A guy in his late twenties, striding down the platform, wearing skinny black jeans and a black velvet military-style jacket. He had dyed-black, artfully-messy hair and a general demeanour of hoping you'd mistake him for Russell Brand.

A grey-haired man in a sober suit, dark tie, polished black shoes and sensible anorak. As he crossed one leg over the other, he revealed hot pink stripey socks.

A bulky bloke wearing two incredibly thick, fluffy-looking hoodies. I wanted to hug him to see if he was as cuddly as he looked :)

A girl in her early twenties wearing fantasically high heels, a very tight, short, purple dress and a tiny black jacket. She looked stunning, but when she sat down in Natwest's waiting area she matched the purple chairs exactly.

Some inventions make you go "wow!" Some inventions make you go "wow.... why did no one thnk of that before? Why doesn't everyone do that?"

I am wrapping Christmas presents, using some wrapping paper I found in the back of the cupboard (probably bought in the January sales). I think it's Tesco Finest, though I can't now remember.

The back of the wrapping paper is marked with a faint dotted 1cm grid, to make it easier to cut straight. Genius!