Visited the Meadowhall last night. Meadowhall is like a huge out of town shopping mall. I used to think out-of-town malls were innovative now I just think they are vulgar. Anyway, I took the wife in an attempt to find her a birthday prezzie for Friday. Typically I was unable to. So instead I did my usual “follow-the-wife-from-shop-to-shop-looking-bored-in-the-hope-someone-takes-pity-on-me-or-the-wife-gets-pissed-off-and-says-we-can-go-home”.

To me, shopping is all well and good if you can fulfill all or some of the following conditions.

1. You actually know what you want
2. You know where it is or which shop will have what you need
3. You have the money to spend
4. The shop is open
5. The shop is not tiny and full of people
6. The shop does not have an overpowering stench

However, as I think I’ve mentioned before, the wife has a different approach to shopping which adheres to one or all of the following conditions

1. Have a vague idea of what you want but not necessarily the practicalities of having the item
2. Wander aimlessly around several shops in a vague notion that they just might have something that they didn’t have in their store in the other city/town
3. Have the money to spend
4. The shop is open (and will remain open, allowing until ten minutes before they shut)
5. If the shop is jam packed with shoppers there must be something good worth looking at so go in anyway.
6. Smelly things are pretty things and good for spending money on
7. Locate the bargain bucket/povvo corner/pykey bin – there in you will find treasures of a bargainous nature
8. There is no harm going back to a shop where you have been already because they might of had something worth buying that you didn’t think of before.
9. You have the right to finally decide you don’t want something right up until the moment you queue up. There after you can keep it in the bag with the receipt so that you can orchestrate a return visit.

So like I said. I was following the wife about having been in the two shops I needed to glance into (a kitchen shop and a PC game shop) and in the twenteenth shop was starting to get a bit impatient. I did my “stand in the shop watching the wife from a distance to save getting foot blisters from wandering about like a lost goat” thing. Eventually the wife made a move to the checkout with her selected item of clothing (which will no doubt be returned in a week) so I stood a slight distance away from the queue line so as not to appear to be part of the queue.

The check out had two operators, one of which was serving the wife. I was stood admiring the socks close but, as I say, not close enough to appear to be part of the queue . This did not stop a customer approaching me and saying “Excuse me love, is this the queue?”. I really had to bite my tongue really hard to prevent me from saying “Yes” and seeing how long it took her to realise that I wasn’t . I promise though I will next time.

Which brings me to ignorance. It’s like when I was at the Uni we’d have this big sign on the door saying “HELPDESK” and you’d guarantee that at least 5 people a day would come in and say “Is this the helpdesk?”. I’d often ponder about how often people walked into butchers asking “Is this the butchers?”. I still cannot understand why people did that. Perhaps it was something only indicative of being at Liverpool Uni. I have no idea! I do know that in all my time at Halfords nobody ever came in and said “Is this Halfords?” nor was I pestered by people asking if the shop I worked in that sold beer, wine, spirits and fags was an off licence. Because it clearly was. Yeah I know you’re thinking “Well it might not be entirely obvious at first glance that the room you are in is a helpdesk”…Yeah? Well fuck that…because nobody ever came into the Accountants I worked at asking if it was an accountants!

Similarly, when I lived in the Gnomepants Grotto (my batchelor pad 1995-1998) people would telephone asking for pizza, doctors appointments and what latest films I had. (My telephone number was 1 digit different to a Pizza shop, a doctors and the video shop (Starbuster’s, Smithdown Road now Subway) ) . Eventually this became too much for me so I started taking orders for pizza, making appointments to see Dr Selim and delighting in telling people mordantly that the latest film I had was “Hard Cumming 6: Bukkake Babes” and that if they wanted they could borrow my copy of the previous weeks Casualty then they could. ahh…Happy times…

Example:

Numpty:- Is that Barry’s Pizza?
stegzy lying: Yes can I take your order?

or

Numpty2:- Can I make an appointment to see Dr Jellybum?
stegzySincerely: Yes what day would you like?

Playing the fool with fools 😀 Joy.