Here comes the Festering Season

Here comes the Festering Season

Guy Fawkes barely cooked, and already certain shops are in full-on Christmas mode, the bastards, with their awful decorations and even worse musical "entertainment", for which somebody must die.

I have grown to hate the so-called retail experience at this time of year, and for a very good reason - I was part of it, and it may explain a lot about the way my head works now. Y'see, in my days as a dreadful stude, I had a terrible evening & Saturday job in a terrible supermrket, selling tramp fuel to the local winos. Terrible, as it happens.

They had a Christmas tape. It was a C-60, with the same 30 minutes of jazzed-up carols on both sides. The version of Good King Wenceslas would drive even the sanest of people to regicide, and I don't care how many maids were a-milking, they could get to fuck as far as I cared. They started playing it in November, under pain of death NEVER to remove it from the machine. I volunteered to collect trolleys a lot.

Come Christmas, the entire crew of till operators were twitching, nervous wrecks, and some of the full-time staff were offered counseling. The girl from the deli cut her finger off in the meat slicer (again) just to get away from the place for a morning. On closing on Christmas Eve, the tape was ceremonially deep-fried in the staff canteen and there was much rejoicing.

"Where's the Christmas tape?" asked Mr Newton, the manager, "Head Office say we need it for next year."

Ah.

In summary: in-shop Christmas music = worse than J. Blunt and C.Dion's bastard progeny.

Worse: Christmas-themed adverts on local radio. J. Blunt and C.Dion's bastard progeny, on acid.

Even Worse: The thought of J. Blunt and C.Dion actually having bastard progeny.


Brief Encounter

A true* story of a trip to the shops.

Everything's-a-Pound Shop Guy: Can I help you sir?

Me: Do you sell Rohypnol?

Pound Shop Guy: Why, yes. Yes we do.

Me: Excellent! How much?

Pound Shop Guy: *sigh* If I had a penny for every time somebody asked me that question, I'd have enough money to buy a gun and shoot you dead.

Me: Well?

Pound Shop Guy: 50p.

* Not true at all


Also

In case you missed it from yesterday's comments, Invicta's scan (from the Daily Mail, of all places) of a naked Felicity Kendal, rubbing against a pole, Penelope Keith talking dirty just out-of-frame. Life imitates art imitates manky devil writing his sordid thoughts into a blog.