So there I was ………….last night……………at the Dolphin Mall……………in the DVD store. I had chosen three movies to help me through another lonely night in the hotel. It was going to be me………A Bond Classic “Moonraker”……………a new movie called “The Happening”……………Tom Clancy’s “Clear and Present Danger”…………..all accompanied by lashings of room service.
But there was a problem. The bill came to $61…………….and I only had $55………………..and hadn’t brought any credit cards with me.
This happens to me a lot, mainly because everything costs about three times more than I was expecting. A bottle of Diet Coke, for instance. I stand in the checkout queue thinking: “That cannot possibly cost more than $1.50” So I prepare $1.50, and then I have to look unfazed and casual when the girl demands $2.00……………….plus tax.
$2.00 plus tax. For a plastic bottle of coke. How can this be? I thought they’d stopped using cocaine as one of the ingredients. So what have they replaced it with? Platinum? Myrrh? It’s the same story with chewing gum, which cannot, even in the wildest wet dream of Mr Wrigley, possibly cost the consumer more than 50 cents a packet. Applying Heald’s law, I stand in line with $1 and then find out the damn stuff is $3 a go.
And nicotine patches. In the adverts they say these will help you stop smoking. Damn right. At $45 for a box of seven you won’t be able to afford cigarettes as well.
Which is the whole point I suppose. Because taking up smoking again is exactly what the nicotine patch industry wants us to do.
Plumbers are surprising, too, especially now they prefer to be called heating engineers and especially if their name is Joe. Heidi had to call a plumber and yes, that is the correct way to spell it) because we had a leaking pump thingy at the back of the thingy that washes my underpants and water was flooding all over the kitchen floor.
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