A suggestion for shoplifters

If you're proposing to steal something (I wouldn't advise it!) do make sure that the door you're proposing to use for your escape - when you're laden with your ill-gotten gains - isn't locked that day. This happened a few weeks ago now and caused us quite a bit of amusement and the memory still brings a smile.

Basket of the week

There was an early candidate for this today - lots of alcohol and a tin of new potatoes but unfortunately the new potatoes were destined for the Lions Christmas charity collection. So I waited for a bit and someone else appeared with seven bags of cat litter, some cat food and five tubes of cotton wool pads. Maybe their cats needed some serious makeup removal?

Vanity citing

Was searching for citations of this blog and I found an entry from Storyteller's World that I missed the first time around and as that blog's archivers are currently in pieces on the floor, let me cite it here (oh for trackbacks, but I suppose as the cited page only exists in the google cache that wouldn't get me very far!)

Again, Sutherland has a digression about the way your book buying makes a kind of statement about yourself. Hence, in the bookshop queue, everyone is curious about what other customers are buying. Not so at the supermarket:

At the Tesco or Safeways check-out line, you do not care in the slightest whether the person in front has smart organic baked beans or the supermarket’s own cheap brand, so long as their cart is not heaped so mountainously high that you will be waiting all day for the till.

Oh no, John! You may feel like that; but I’m much more curious about what other people are buying at the supermarket than at Waterstones. Their trolley contents are an endless source of fantasy and speculation - as I would like mine to be for them. Why is that woman buying just two bottles of gin, a tin of shoe polish, and a toothbrush? What kind of party is that going to be, with the couple stocking up with a dozen loaves of white sliced bread, 2 dozen bananas and a packet of Alka-Seltzer?

If you don’t believe me, try sampling some of rajm’s checkout experiences.

Ah, further inspection (edit on 25th Nov) reveals that the original was part of those rescued

Must make sure I keep an eye on the contents of those trollies!

Letting go

More apposite words from Alan Ecclestone's day book:

Let the roses go, that you fastened in my hair
One summer night in a garden, and the song
That we heard from another house, where the piano was playing:
The shadow a street lamp cast though the net of a curtain,
The river at night, smooth silent Thames, flowing though London.

Kathleen Raine from Parting

Fitted in well with my mood that day, letting go of a person - or of one's image of a person is always traumatic, oh yes I can handle that new information but it involves losing and that's the point where it is not so easy.

Was looking for quotations of this poem - mainly so I didn't have to type it! I found this moving piece

Gunfight at the quick checkout

.. well nearly..
On Tuesday I was working one of the quick checkouts when I was aware of a customer speaking about someone apparently in the third person, I eventually realised he was talking about the person next to him as if she didn't exist. She had apparently remonstrated with him about the number of items he had (10 items or less) but he had 13 (gosh!). But he was totally over the top sexist, violent.. I was trying to get him to think about his shopping and cool things down while talking quietly and trying to decide whether I ought to be pressing my panic button. He eventually left with the injunction to 'call your husband here and we'll sort things out properly'
And we all breathed a sigh of relief! And I've still never had the opportunity to see what happens when I press those buttons!

Basket of the week

Came from some folk who bought a large quantity of alcohol some soft drinks and a lettuce. Bill came to £101.10 (love the binary!). They said that the lettuce was for the hamster but didn't say whether the hamster drank.

The purpose of bringing in chip and pin was so that people could share their PINs (and hence their cards)

- from someone else this afternoon. I'm not good at fuming quietly!

Deepest failure

Just tried and failed to get deepest sender working with this beta blogger setup, I tried the instructions here but without success - get a message about the feed specified not being enabled... anyone....?

Just have to manually state that: Mad Priest reports that

In a Vatican first, Pope Benedict XVI will appear in a photo calendar featuring shots of the pontiff in different poses for each month of the year. The 79-year-old Catholic church leader will appear in 14 different poses for the 2007 calendar, to be distributed with Italy's Famiglia Cristiana weekly magazine.

boggle.

Procrastinate!

via Exigency In Specie comes this piece of fun:

Writing and Gender

Via Geoff Coupe comes the Gender Genie, supply some writing and it tells you your gender. I gave it a blog posting (well two as it prefers longer texts) and it had me as just male (458 vs 454). I then supplied it with some Julian of Norwich one of the earliest known female writers in English and it recognised her as female (305 vs 212).

I liked yellow

The picture's fuzzy due to the sun being about to rise in that direction but this should be the last time those yellow windowframes are seen. We had most of the windows replaced yesterday - outside temperature < 5C brrrr! - and today they're back for the more difficult ones. The view from the webcam - assuming it can still be attached will then have a boring white window frame instead of its current deep yellow. No doubt the webserver will also be down for a bit.

Letter from school

The software has been replaced, this will not happen again

- wot never? They obviously have a higher expectation of software lifetime than me!