Satirical Snapshots Bringing You Whimsy On A Wednesday!
A little later than usual…
I don’t know what’s going on but I think karma is toying with me.
I’m experiencing a bout of normality. It happened right after being forced to buy an old biddy trolley.
I made a trip to the NEC in Birmingham with my friend to visit the BBC Good Food Show. This is an exhibition of gargantuan proportions and it very nearly killed me.
My friend insisted that I purchase one of those trolleys that old women take shopping with them because that’s what hardened, show going professionals do. You need somewhere to stuff your swag.
I have to admit I was slightly alarmed by this but eventually went to Argos (undercover) and bought a tartan (because it has to be tartan) biddy buggy.
I aged drastically in one afternoon.
A Liquid Lunch Be -GINS
It took two train rides to get there. All carriages were packed with the great unwashed public raring to get their hands on some of the finest drinks and food that Blighty and its European enemies had to offer. It took miles to walk from the train to the exhibition hall; longer than it took me to climb the highest mountain in Vail, Colorado. I was knackered before I even got there.
Fortuitously, we descended upon the many gin bars that were giving out samples of the latest GINious flavours: mince pie, moonshine, and pomegranate popper, all of which I found rather pretentious but took for medicinal purposes.
This was followed by sample after sample of food being handed out by the many fodder stations. There seemed to be rather a lot of cheese going on. Cheese and gin. Or maybe it was cheese flavoured gin? I don’t remember.
The tight-fisted exhibitors managed to cut their samples into the smallest of pieces. I even saw a man slice a single sausage into 16 bits before laying it out with a bunch of cocktail sticks.
“Steady on there, mate. I’m on a diet “
I’m very particular about who I share my snacks with and am somewhat fearful of buffet style food and the greedy public that attends such a place dive right on in before it’s all gone. Cocktail sticks totally ignored because time is of the essence as they snatch at the goodies with their grubby little mitts.
“Do you want a piece?” my friend asked.
“No, I bloody do not. That chatty little swine just put his filthy fingers all over it. Did you see the state of his nails? Gross.”
It comes to something when you have to say that the most generous sample givers were the Scots at the whisky bar. Who’d have thought? I had to stop them from giving me any more single malts because I was in danger of running people over with my swag carrying vehicle.
I arrived back home at 9 pm beaten by public exhaustion to within an inch of my life.
Possessed by Jinn and Tonic
I woke up the next day mysteriously semi-crippled like an old codger. I glanced at my tartan trolley suspiciously. Hmmm….
No time for sitting down with a nice cup of tea because it was Christmas tree day. Two of them in my house – east wing and west. This took all day long and I was so tired that I started to hallucinate a little as I could hear angels singing in the distance. I then realised I’d left the ‘Choir of Kings College, Cambridge’ on a repetitive loop.
Feeling staggeringly exhausted and aging by the minute, I checked in the mirror for grey hairs and missing teeth in case I’d been possessed by something nasty. My eyes were too tired to see anything which was probably a blessing in disguise. I took myself off to bed and had a horrible dream about being stuck in a sanitarium with gin flavoured cheese.
The Dawning of A New Chapter
Has happened. Since buying a tartan biddy trolley I have accomplished so many things that one might suggest I have been blessed with the wisdom of the elders. My usual chaos management has been replaced with organised madness. Trees are up. All Christmas gifts are bought and wrapped including the creation of organic homemade side gifts. International parcels have been parcelled and posted. I’ve even made my Christmas dinner butters, fed a homeless man and attended social festive events with the charm and grace of a royal princess. I feel so mature and normal I nearly considered a tweed skirt, Barbour jacket, and sensible haircut.
Curiously, since arriving into adulthood, I have been rewarded with external gratitude. This is a very new experience for me.
The first being a text from my phone provider offering to pay off the final 3 months of my mobile contract so I could have a pre-Christmas upgrade. Visions of an iPhone XS danced in the remaining part of my childlike head.
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Just rewarding you for your loyalty.”
Well, bloody hell!
Nice. Not gonna argue. The very next day my beautiful gadget arrived.
The most fun thing about this phone, which is not really a phone but a state of the art masterpiece, is that I can turn myself into a talking emoji. I’ve already had so much fun responding to texts to friends with my digital talking head that I’m becoming a horrible nuisance.
Oh how rapidly one reverts to type!
And then, another nice message arrived on my new gadget from the bank. Yes, you read that right,
“A Nice Message From The Bank”
It said:
“Please go and collect your free bottle of Prosecco Rivamonte NV DOC from the wine merchants for being such an adorable customer.”
To be honest, at this point, I thought I’d been hacked. I took to my trusty car with my ready to fight attitude and grown-upness and sped off to the winery. True to word my FREE bottle of fizz was waiting. Oh, and a tenner off any further £30 spend – yeah, that’s where they got me. Weakness located.
I arrived home with an assortment of lovely, top class fine wines (one free) at a marvelous discounted price and that’s when I went right off my tartan trolley, lost my sensibility and put my bewwwts back on!
Phew…that was a close call.
