Friday 26 August 2016

Once You Pop You Can't Stop

This is just a quick one for my Twitter followers. Anyone who has me on Facebook will already know about it as, during my blogging meltdown earlier in the week, I posted a status about it. A microblog if you will. Please yourself. Anyway the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter on its users meant that I couldn't do the story justice on that particular platform. So you get the extended version now.

I work at a well known university in Liverpool. I can't tell you which one it is because I never have anything nice to say about it and...well....saying nasty things about it apparently violates their social media policy. By which they mean their policy of controlling your thoughts. Across the road from said unnamed university is a small branch of Tesco's where most days I can be found purchasing my lunch. My last visit ended in the kind of ignominy that is reserved only for me, and here's why.

Having bought my lunch I was on my way out when my chair suddenly came to a complete stop. I pushed off again but it was going nowhere. Something was catching on my right hand side wheel. I looked down and noticed that my ruck sack, emblazoned with St Helens RLFC logo and available from the club store at a probably not very reasonable price (I wouldn't know, it was a present) had got tangled up in my wheel. One of the straps had got wrapped around the spindle to the point where it would be impossible to unwind it without removing the wheel. So in full view of Tesco's lunchtime customers I took the only course of action available to me and jumped out of my chair on to the shop floor. There I sat by the shelf stacked high with Pringles, unwinding my troublesome strap from my now one-wheeled chair.

I put the wheel back on and climbed back in. But not before two men asked me if they could help in any way. Usually, my misfortunes of this nature in the vicinity of work are witnessed only by female students under the age of 25, so it was a blessed relief to only get caught looking like a dickhead by two middle aged men. Still I declined their assistance. If you need help getting back into your chair then you should never get out of it on the shop floor at Tesco's by the Pringles or anywhere else. That's a basic rule among us Undateables.

The next day one of my colleagues, who had completely ignored the Facebook post on the subject, came back from her own visit to Tesco's and told me that she was considering buying me some Pringles. All of which caused her and other colleagues much merriment at my expense. But then what else is new in that barnyard? I wish she had bought me some Pringles anyway because a) I like Pringles and b) It would have been funny. What it does prove is that you never know who is reading the nonsense that you put out on social media, even if they don't join in with pillorying you for it online at the time.

No comments: