Today at Tesco I was walking towards a woman carrying bottles of wine between her arms, close to the chest. A few steps between us, one bottle slipped over her arm. I remember this in slow motion… I look at the bottle falling, then her face, she cringes. Then I go back to the bottle and it bounces once, then hits the linoleum again and shatters in a surprisingly small footprint. While I am observing this, I take a couple steps back so nothing hits me. We both look at each other, and the people around us, turn, and vanish into an aisle.

I went and got my own bottle of wine, and then at the till the oddest thing happened. I got carded.

Till (old) man: Can’t let you buy the wine without ID*.
Me: Wow. I’m 33.
Lady (packing) in front of me: You should take it as a compliment.
Me (to till man): Thanks. But I don’t carry ID**. I’m 33, really.
Till man: OK, you’ve got white hair, so I’ll let you have it <wink>.
Me (to myself): Now you’ve ruined it.

* Legal drinking/purchase of alcohol in the UK is 18!

** This will change soon. As a foreigner in this country I’m being used as a test subject for their new and pointless ID card effort. That’s another story, though, so I’ll leave it for now.

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I break a near year-long silence for a rant. The restaurant was dimly-lit; a bit too dark, but manageable. Then, a group of about fifty thousand people came in to occupy the reserved table next to us; shoved a baby stroller next to me; prevented the waitress from accessing our table; and, finally, commenced to light up the place with their camera flashes.

The first ten flashes — each multiplied by plenty of mirrors it seemed — were tolerable. I was paying attention though, all ten were repeats because the picture just did not come out perfect enough. They were over doing it with the next ten I thought. So I asked one of the guys if they could stop it with the flashes… “b-b-but we’re having a party”… and I said “but you also need to be considerate to other people”.

Obviously, I wasn’t popular with that crowd but I don’t care… people who do not respect other people’s space should be told to tone it down when they overdo it.

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