There is a Bomb The Bass song called ”Winter In July,” it isn’t that late in the year, but it certainly feels like winter in April. I shouldn’t be needing to wear woolly hats and gloves in the middle of the afternoon in the latter third of April. I look around and there are people in shorts and t-shirts, and three years ago that would have been me. Instead I sit here wishing I had another couple of layers to add to the four I have on. And hand warmers. And thermals. It is majorly cold.
On a Friday afternoon when we have nipped into town to get a few bits ahead of a weekend sojourn up to Nottingham for my mum’s eightieth, we have stopped to have a coffee and to watch the world go by in my usual sun trap spot in front of la Rusta on the corner of Queens Square. As we are drinking the coffee there is a woman, who is older than us, who is on the phone trying to give her dad directions to find her, and it sounds hard work, and Helen is having a joke with her when she gets off the phone. Then when her dad turns up and they are sat down having drinks, I hear her say the phrase ‘We need a Trump over here.’ Fortunately, we had finished our drinks and were heading off before we could listen to any of the racist diatribe which was following that.
After the game on Saturday we dumped the bags in the car and set off for Nottingham. We don’t usually drive anywhere on Saturday evenings so don’t know what the travel is usually like, but weren’t expecting it to be a three-hour long audition for the new reality show, ‘Who Can Drive Like The Biggest Twat?’ It really is a surprise there are not more serious accidents.
Yes, it is something which annoys me way more than it probably should, but it does drive me around the bend. When I’m in a shop and have paid in cash and they are giving you change, it is when they put the note on your hand first and then pile the coins on top of the note. Especially when you only have the one free hand as the goods you have bought are in the other. And then they tut at you because you have to stop, put everything back down on the counter so you can slide the coins off the note to put in one pocket and put the note(s) back in the wallet. All of which could have been done with one hand if they’d put the coins in the hand first and the note(s) on top, as they should do if they are counting the change out and starting from the smallest denomination in doing the change, and not just plonking it in your hand without counting it.
Then there was the fuckwit behind the counter in Boots who put the coins change on top of the receipt which she had already placed on top of the box of cough medicine I’d just bought. Seriously woman, what the fuck did you expect to happen apart from it all falling on the floor. Of course it might have helped if you were actually looking in my direction when you are giving the change instead of over at your colleague.
There is new little food stand in the County Mall – Auntie Annie’s. Their main USP seems to be freshly made and baked pretzels. I don’t know whether it is the novelty value of it being something new in town, or if there was a hitherto unknown desire for fresh pretzels in Crawley. But at quarter past nine there is a twenty-person queue at the little stand, and thirty yards further down the mall the bloke on the Krispy Kreme donuts stand is looking on forlornly as he has a queue of exactly zero people. I suppose we will see if the queues remain and the novelty of a new food source wears off, but anything that takes custom away from overpriced, overhyped, corporate American shite which doesn’t even taste nice like Krispy Kreme can’t be bad. (Although I don’t know where Auntie Annie’s originate from.)
Actually scrub the above, I’ve had a look, and they originate from the US as well, another of the ever-expanding American chains, so they can get in the bin as well. Perhaps time to get the queue to move up the mall a bit more and to use the bloke selling his array of olives, nuts, seeds, and soft fruits, and other more healthy nibbles. But healthy and Crawley don’t really go together, do they?
It is difficult to describe how it feels to have injections in your eyes. I have got used to the process of having the numbing drops, then having the iodine drops for cleansing, having the sticky patches and the clamps to keep the eyelids open, to look down the inside of the nose so I can’t see the needle coming in from the other side of the eye. And then you can see the strange liquid or bubble creatures floating around in my eyes. But once the eyes have been unclamped it is a strange feeling closing my eyelids, it feels a bit of a struggle. It is like that feeling when you have put on a bit of weight, and you then struggle to do your clothes up as they are now very tight. That’s what it feels like, it feels as if my eyeballs have gotten fat, and my eyelids are the clothes which are too tight to fit properly. And that it takes them a while to go down and settle back to how they were.