Tales from my handbag

With the Season of Suicide upon us, I thought I’d tickle my misery gland good and proper with a screening of possibly the most depressing film of all time - The Road. To sum up: man and boy go for an almighty long ramble without changing their underwear. En route they find some tins of Del Monte and a group of peckish cannibals. Man goes  skinny dipping and dies. Boy finds new rambling partner. It put me in mind of the Co-op last week when people went berserk in the bread aisle for want of a white bloomer. Having said that, I regularly go berserk in the Co-op, usually owing to low staff IQ and poor layout whereby till queues extend way past the bog paper into dog food rendering those on a hunt for bog paper and/or dog food unable to secure said articles without rubbing body parts or treading on loose babies. Having said all of that, even if it got so bad I actually killed someone in there, I wouldn’t want to eat them, bloomer or no bloomer.

Bloody hell, a flurry of snow and the country goes ga-ga. Is this all it takes for the hermetically-sealed citizens of this country to step out of their front doors and actually speak to each other? When I woke up yesterday morning, I had a Life on Mars moment when I looked out into the street and saw people - not scurrying to work or school, eyes down - but sliding down the road on makeshift sledges and having snowball fights with their neighbours. It felt like a street party but without the jelly. At my local shop, people were queueing for milk rations and laughing with strangers. Bizarre. Meanwhile, further up the road, there were two car crashes and a broken down M&S delivery lorry, a woman had collapsed in the Co-op and a child had cracked his head open on a shop floor swimming with slush. Blimey, it felt like an episode of Casualty. Today, the snow looks to have melted somewhat but even without going outside, I can bet the spirit of the Blitz will have disappeared with it. Shame.Â