Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Needless to say, just as I was about to go downtown to the Yoigo shop, I found my phone. The end result of all yesterday's shenanigans is that I am 6 euros out of pocket and I have a new chip in the non-lost phone. Where it works. But where it doesn't have any of my contact numbers. Ah well, I was looking for something to while away the hours on the boat this evening and now I have it. As opposed to something enjoyable like finishing my book on Berlin in 1945, say.

As expected, the Carrefour hypermarket has introduced payment for parking beneath it. And, as ever, the entrance has been designed so that you can only reach the button and the ticket if you are an orang-utan or are prepared to scratch and dent your car so as to get close to these. The development certainly highlights how many drivers were using the place as a free parking lot - about 75% on the basis of what I saw this morning. Still, it's not all bad; it's created a job for one person to sit in a littler cubicle by the pay-machine, charged with coming out of this to tell confused punters that the machine doesn't take your ticket but just reads the bar code.

In Carrefour itself - a shop I seriously dislike - I made my first-ever 3-for-2 purchase. Since I wanted two of the product, this was a no-brainer. But - by way of a another example of poor consumer orientation - there was no indication of the price. So no way of telling whether you were paying 2, 3 or 4 times the normal price. Bah!

Anyway, the products were for my cleaner, as my last task this morning was to compile a list of things for her to do over the coming weeks. As ever, the challenge was to find things that didn't involve her touching anything fragile. A Spanish friend once told me all cleaners were clumsy but I'm not convinced.

Finally . . . The BBC has a program in which artists show their works with a view to being accepted for showing in one of London's galleries. The panel of three contains a very attractive woman of a certain age who this morning pronounced - "Art has to produce an emotional reaction in you. Without this it's not art, however well it's done." The scales fell off my eyes on hearing this. So, if I recoil in disgust and say 'That's just shit', I'm looking at a work of art. Which explains a lot. I forgive you Damian and Tracey.

This is today's post, published early. Last night's post was a tad more serious and you can see it by scrolling down.

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