The supercool man and the super heated ham.

Yesterday I needed to post some letters and so walked into Rickmansworth to do so. Whilst there I thought I'd have a coffee and seeing that Caffe Nero was full to overflowing, I decided to go to Costa.

I ordered my coffee and sat down.

A very glamorous couple were behind me - well you'd think they were glamorous, I saw them as a right berk and a snobby cow, but you get my drift (who the fuck goes to Rickmansworth for a coffee dressed in their Sunday best???).

The man and woman sat down and shortly thereafter the Costa lawyer carried over their hot food.

Now anyone who has eaten at Costa will know that for some strange reason they do not warm ones toastie to a sensible eating temperature, they superheat it to a point where it is initially untouchable unless you have asbestos gloves and certainly should not come into contact with human skin.

Supercool daddyo (wearing fucking sunglasses of all things) clearly didn't know this and got stuck right in. Needless to say I was watching with great interest.

What happened next was priceless.

He bit into the toastie and the look of grave concern on his face made it clear he knew immediately he'd made a very major mistake.

Normal people would have just spat it out, but he was clearly too cool for such an action.

What he did was half bite the toastie in an attempt to sever just a tiny bit. What happened was that he ended up pulling one of the super heated bits of ham from the sandwich along with some super heated cheese which then swung from the toastie onto his chin.

This caused a very severe commotion with him totally losing his cool, his sunglasses and his dignity as he wildly thrashed at his now quite severely scalded face. Mrs Snobby Bitch looked very annoyed.

Once he'd removed the superheated food from his face he had a quite angry red mark where it has adhered to him.

He wanted nothing more to do with his clearly malevolent food and pushed it away.

I cried with laughter much to his annoyance. 

The lessons here are:

1. Never attempt to eat a Costa toastie until it has cooled down for at least five minutes.
2. Take off your sunglasses before you go into Costa in Rickmansworth.
3. Super heated ham and cheese hurts like hell when stuck to a human face.
4. Once your sunglasses have hit the deck and the lens are scratched, no amount of surreptitious rubbing will get the scratch off.

Tesco - you complete and utter berks.

You'll all know that I am not best enamoured with my local Tesco, it would appear to me to be the commercial equivalent of a diplomatic posting to Outer Mongolia - that is a punishment.

But the numpties running the place have a new and even worse than before way of making our lives a misery.

For months now, an outfit called Crystal have had a stand just at the end of the checkouts and just before the exit where a a variety of nylon clad individuals try to engage you in a conversation  regarding buying double glazing, soffits and fascias etc. They basically shout at you and threaten you with a brochure.

So I have a couple of issues here:

1. Who is their right fucking mind, pops into Tesco for two beers, a loaf of bread and some green beans and then thinks, you know what, I could do with some new windows! Who??
2. How to the nylon clad numpties think I can take their brochure with hands full of Tesco carrier bags. How??
3. Why do Crystal persist as I have never seen ANYONR even stops and talk to these people - if we've been shopping and have bags/trollies of shopping, we do not want to sop and spend £10k on windows.

Last weekend Tesco went one further and filled the space in between the inside and outside doors with yobbos in cheap suits trying to flog a TV service. I say yobbos as these gits, all less than 20 and all more mouthy that Mrs Mouthy from Mouthy City were essentially physically standing in peoples way and shouting at them!

Needless to say I told them where to get off, but surely the buffoons that run Tesco as a whole and Tesco Larkfield in particular must know how shitty this makes the place to shop at?

Tesco, for long long the darling of the retail sector have for some while now been scraping the bottom of the barrel, this is a new low!

Doing the Kowloon slide - or as we call in Britain, two Ed stories.

Ed is American, that can't be helped and it is certainly not his fault, but it does go a long way to explain these two incidents.

In the first, Ed and I had been to see Lexmark in Paris, to try and sell them something we didn't actually have and probably never would, this is common practice in the Leasing world.

Ed is also eccentric and a bit of a polymath but first and foremost he is an American.

Upon our return to this green and pleasant land we know as either Blighty, England or at worst Britain, and what Merkins know as the You Knighted Kindgom, we passed through all of the necessary customs and so on and made our way to the car park where my green BMW 525 TDS was parked.

Approaching the car I could see not all was right and upon closer inspection I could see the car had been broken into and what contents were there when I parked the car, were no longer there.

I mentioned this to Ed thus:

"Oh dear, looks like the car has been broken into and I've been rather badly burgled."

Ed then started to shout - to be honest he may have been having a mild panic attack and said:

"Call the police!!!"

I told him:

"No need Ed, all they'll do is waste our time, let's get you back to the hotel."

Ed appeared not to hear this and for the next several minutes shouted "Call the police!!" at regular intervals.

As we exited the car park, I called my wife and said:

"Hi, back at Heathrow. Bit of a setback on the car front, it has been broken into, but all is well and I am taking Ed to his hotel, be home in a couple of hours."

On hearing this, Ed started to shout "Call the police" again and my wife asked what on earth was going on.

To this day, Ed will comment that I showed almost 007 levels of cool in not shouting and/or shooting someone because my car had been broken into. I tried to explain I was merely being English but to no avail.

The second story could be considered to be entitled: The saga of smoking Ed and the fifty pound note.

One morning, Ed turned up in our Watford office and having arrived at my desk, instantly said:

"I forgot, I need a pack of cigarettes."

At which he pulled a crisp new £50 from his money clip - one of from what I could see were at least 20!

I said "You are buying a box of fags with a £50?" (In these days fags were about £3 a box of 20)

He replied, "Yes. Stated with all of the confidence of a senior executive in a major American corporation.

I chuckled and said I didn't think this would be quite the ticket as the local fag shop would almost certainly look askance and deny all knowledge of ever having sold fags before. Moreover they'd consider this odd sounding chap to probably be a gangster and would shut up shop after he'd left and move back to Pakistan.

Ed simply looked at me and informed me that of course he'd be able to buy his 20 fags with a fifty, it was after all the currency of good old Blighty.

I merely chuckled and he tottered off.

Ten minutes later he appeared at my desk again with these somewhat contrite words:

"Mate, can you spot me a fiver as they appear not to want anything to do with this!" and he brandished the fifty in front of me.

I answered "Really, fancy that!" At which I gave him his a fiver and he tottered off once more.

I had the good grace not to piss myself laughing until he'd exited stage left.

Americans are wonderful, rich Americans are hilarious!

Ed is a very good friend so none of the above is meant in any way to denigrate a wonderful bloke!

How chavs communicate.

We've all seen the David Attenborough programmes where animals in the wild meet each other and generally muck about by repeating the noise the other makes or by mimicking their actions.

Today, by accident, I discovered that chavs do the same.

The first thing that happens when chavs meet is the verbal exchange that goes a lot like this:

Chav 1: Orrite?

Chav 2: Orrite?

Then they will perform a little chav dance that is half way between a proper handshake and the funny thing people from Harlem do.

Then the communication continues and the person to whom the ? is attributed will raise their voice slightly when voicing their line.

And it will go something like this:

Chav 1: Where you off to?

Chav 2: Going danda bank!

Chav 1: Going danda bank?

Chav 1: Yea!

Chav 2: arl come wivya!

Chav 1: Yorl come wivme?

Chav 2: Yea!

And so it continues.

And at each stage along the way, Chav 1 and 2 will mimic each others stance and actions, almost in a comedy fashion

When you consider it, a very successful way of communicating as each sentence is verified.

So chavs are not just a waste of tax money and oxygen after all.

Tesco - even by your crap standards this take some beating.

Just did my shopping twice.

Loaded my old ladies trolley with stuff - not much as I only spent £40 and loaded it onto the conveyor.

I left about 18 inches between the lady in front's shopping and mine as I refuse to use the silly dividers.

The woman in front and I were the only people in this particular queue.

I was checking an email and whilst looking down I heard a rather brusque:

"Is this your shopping?" No excuse me, no introduction, nothing just a barked question. I didn't know she was speaking to me at first so didn't answer, so she repeated herself, shouting.

"I said, is this your shopping?"

Now, and I am proud of myself, and taking a leaf from Eddie Izzard who once said, until you have paid for shopping you have merely spent a while moving stuff about, quick as a flash I said:

"No" and walked away with my trolley.

I then did my shopping again and left her to have all of the first attempt taken away.

Tesco, your company is going down the shitter quicker than a big turd, when will you realise that it's a people game.

You've wrung as much as you can out of the supply chain, fucked the farmers and cheated the British public by feeding us horse instead of beef.

Unless you learn to value your customers, you will go the same way as BA and have to merge with some Spaniards, and as we know with 25% unemployment, the Spaniards are pretty crap at everything but football.