Still Life

My day was fine.  Really.

Feel free to read the rant.  But be warned, it is more than a bit ranty.  Or you could spare yourself the ordeal and do something more fun instead.  I'd understand if you did.

I went shopping today - for food, so it's not stress shopping.  Or it shouldn't have been.

I got to the supermarket on a bus that was punctual.  Maybe today will be OK, thought naive, sixty-times-bitten me.

Get into the supermarket and I want to get rid of a few empty bottles.  Except there is some world class dithering going on in front of the machine.  Herr Ditherer (* for my German readers who might not have seen or heard the word "dither" before it means - sich nicht entscheiden können (zwischen etwas)) had just been to the bakery counter and had bought bread and some cakes.  The bread he put in the narrow front part of the trolley and he wanted to do the same with the cakes but they didn't fit.  So instead of putting them in the main part of the trolley, he came up with the idea of taking the bread out and giving it to Frau Ditherer.  The cakes still did not fit.  Maybe, reasoned Herr D, if I turned the package round... then it still didn't fit.  It continued like this, blocking access to the machine, until someone in the queue behind me gave a very audible "Tsk".  You have to hear this done to properly appreciate how good some people are at conveying disapproval with only three letters.

I resolved to get my shopping done as quickly as possible and to choose any other check-out to pay at.

The rest of the shop was ok until I got to the checkout.  The three people were together but had shopped separately, they were all using the one loyalty card.  The loyalty card that had been loaded on to one of their phones.  Our store doesn't have the facility to read cards on phones, so the cashier had to type in the 20 digit number every time - I can see the advantage of having to type in a number rather than just swiping the card...

Anyway, I got out and headed for my bus, round the corner and the bus is just driving away.  Typical.  I think I'll head for the bus stop about 10 minutes away, I can get another bus from there.  Not if it passes you on the way to the bus stop you can't...

And then when I get on the bus, a baby starts howling.  Not the baby's fault but the screaming is relentless.  And behind me is someone who is having one those deathless "He said... and then she said... and then he said...." conversations.  Without stopping for breath apparently.  When I got off the bus 20 minutes later they were still going.  

I genuinely don't know how people can do that.  I can go to work, work for 10 hours with all the social interaction that involves, come home and still manage to describe my day with just the word "fine". And that's really enough anyone would need to know about my day.