On Irony

On Irony

Spotters' badge:

* Fat women in England football shirts that leave little to the imagination

* Exceedingly bad dentistry

* Crew-cut children on a sugar rush, rapping old ladies round the shins with their Happy Meal toys

* Heinz Red Cabbage - 61 % extra FREE!

* At least fifteen highly visible security cameras and dire warnings of prosecution for low-price transgressors

Yes - after yesterday's rant on the phenomenon of 99p / 98p / Lidl stores that is sweeping our once proud nation of shopkeepers, I find myself - rather ironically - in the Weymouth branch of 99p Stores (formerly Courts Furnishings) in search of cheap office supplies.

Yes, I know that makes me a hypocrite of the first order, but if it's any consolation, I did wear a baseball cap especially for the occasion, which I turned back-to-front in the accepted IQ-reducing manner the moment I crossed into Pit of Doom.

"How much is this?" I asked, and immediately felt like a dork.

Clutching my purchase, and narrowly escaping a frisking down by the burly security guard, I fled next door to the 98p Store ("We'll beat ANY price, or we'll double the difference!") to see if they could beat the price on my 99p envelopes. They couldn't, so that's 2p I won't be seeing again.

Luckily, it was Shopmobility day in Weymouth, so the boy and I availed ourselves of an abandoned vehicle that was causing an obstruction at the tills, and led the forces of law and order on a low-speed chase around the Town Centre, running slowly amok outside Superdrug until the batteries ran out.

It was a fair cop.

On the bright side:

Total number of socks and sandals spotted: one.

The message may well be getting across.


A travesty of the Democratic Process

You should know me by now: I'm not one to tell people to vote for me in national awards, because I don't think these things should be reduced to some sort of popularity contest.

Then, I thought "Sod it" and "Who am I trying to kid?"

VOTE FOR ME

The usual drill: Free beer, money and sex for every tenth vote*.

* Free beer money and sex offer open only to residents of Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. Offer closes 19th October 1968.