Because I'm bored, and I really do have no life or anything to care for....I worked out today, that at a very conservative estimate, I spend around £813.15 per year on coffees in Nero.

Shocking. Enough to give me a coffee-ing fit.

.....still bored.

.......bored

We've all heard the theories bandied about:

-Climate change
-Ever increasing populations
-Falsely deflated market prices and supermarket 'lossleading' finally caving in
-Vastly increased cattle farming taking 8 times the resources in food and grain to produce same volume of food as vegetation would
-Reduction in plantation space available for growing crops due to displacement for (extremely enviornmentally questionable) biofuel production.

Nope, as if. Thats just for eco-conspiracy theorists surely?

It seems the real reason is nothing other than good old fashioned shopkeepers thievery - the kind thats been rife for years and is the bain of tourists everywhere, with ne'er-do-well traders always looking to eek a few more pennies from unsuspecting buyers by making up prices and shortchanging on a whim.

At least, if Sainsburys is anything to go by then that's the reason. It's enough to make me call Watchdog. Loose mushrooms, I'll get me a bag of those, I thought. And being the penny-pinching conscientious shopper I am, I'll weigh them so I can add up as I go along (grocery shopping AND maths - oh the debauchery I partake in).

Happy with my shopping, and playing my favourite supermarket game (apart from count the MILF) of 'have I added it up right?', I reasoned my purchases were going to be the princely sum of £5.52. If I'm right I'll treat myself to a well done ice lolly I thought. But all hopes of a deserved frozen treat were wiped away in an instant.

£2.28 per kilo said the scales. 63p for my brown bags worth. Thoroughly reasonable for enough fungi to cover two pasta meals. But no, Fagin Sainsbury had other ideas. Ignoring the little sticker proudly attached to the bag, the chunky little fellas were scanned and weighed through by the cashier. £2.58 per kilo. 70p.

Shocking. It's all too clear now - 30p a kilo on mushrooms here, no doubt 20p a kilo on sweet potatoes there. Before you know it, in the confusion of an average family shop with items whizzing down the conveyor at breakneck speed and harrassed shoppers distracted by trying to bag up quicker than the conveyor belt throws them out...an extra few quid out of your pocket, and another few million for Sainsburys.

I demand immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, to be redeployed at borders across all supermarkets and an urgent meeting of NATO.

Please, if there are, can you help solve a conundrum that has plagued me for years?

Why does it take so fucking long to get a prescription at a chemists??

This is probably the work side of me coming out - Business Analyst: trying to make processes more efficient - as much as my natural tendency to be an impatient, grumpy (but loveable) sod.

Surely, surely, the process should be no more complicated than this:

Person brandishing prescription: "Good day kind pharmacist / counter personage (delete as appropriate). Would you be gracious enough to dispense these medicines posthaste please"

Pharmacist / counterperson: "certainly miss,mr or mrs person brandishing your prescription....i will get it straight away"

----Pharmacist types in national health number on the computer, checks its valid, turns around, finds item on shelf, clicks some kind of confirmation on the computer, waits for sticky label, returns to counter----

Person no longer brandishing prescription, but now holding paper bag of medicines: "Thank you for your timely and efficient transaction. Good day to you."

Oh no, instead its.....

Person brandishing prescription: "Good day kind pharmacist / counter personage (delete as appropriate). Would you be gracious enough to dispense these medicines posthaste please"

Pharmacist / counterperson: ".....it will be about 15 minutes. Are you going to wait?"

Person no longer brandishing prescription: "Yes."

And then that person....

-----takes seat. Ha, thats a laugh. Stands in corner of chemists, in heat which is stuffier than a soho old boys members club.
-----slides as far along seat as possible to avoid contagious airbourne germs of person next to them (or accidental kicks received from small child unaware where their foot is going)
-----listens to pharmacist talk to assistant about some inane personal topics
-----watches counterperson walk behind and back out front, behind and back out front, several times in failed attempt to relieve boredom. Possibly with halfhearted moment of display tidying interspersed in the middle.
-----Hears some kind of keyboard tapping on computer and tinkling of tablets being measured. Maybe.
-----Whilst hearing the above, glances behind the neck height partition and on watching pharmacist 'dispensing', gets the distinct impression that they look like they've never seen this complicated piece of computer equipment in front of them before and look like their eyes are glazed over in panic and fear at how to use it.
-----on the verge of coma, madness, or death - suddenly to be awoken by the shouting of their name.
-----dazed, forgets address momentarily, and wonders what year and country it is.

Excuse my language again, but why why why why why does it take so fucking long to do what is essentially press a few buttons on a computer, go to shelf, and bag it up. They make Argos look like a McDonalds drive-thru.

Guess where Ive been this afternoon then!

Special K - now with free psychological scarring

It's been a while since I've had a 'rant', and I've been brewing on this thought for several weeks...

We've all seen it, I'm sure - the Special K advert, with the woman in the holiday snaps grabbing various items and hiding. The reason, supposedly, is that she's far too grotesque in size and shape to be seen as normal.

It's not the only example of our current size and stereotyping obsession, I know, but it sticks out as I've seen it constantly at the cinema, and as one of the crassest and highlights perfectly (wrong word, really) the manipulative and damaging idea bandied about the media, and other institutions. To have an advert where a woman of perfectly natural, normally healthy size is portrayed to feel she needs to lose weight to 'fit in', 'be normal', 'be acceptible' etc, is another shocking cog in this 21st century image bombardment. One that dangerously reinforces worrying concepts of perceptions of social norm that are quite frankly disturbing and wrong.

Going back to the advert in question, the woman hiding can be no more than a size 12 and a bit, or maybe even a 10...or even 14....but even if she were more than that, so what. To put across the idea that you need to diet based on the image of the woman presented before you, well, what kind of psychological message does that send? And probably just as pertinent, the one-sided implication by not featuring a male or even a couple...

Embrace people for being people, in all shapes and sizes.

I won't even start on the 'Special K diet' challenge. I'm no nutritionist, but I'd wager that you could eat any cereal as a meal twice a day for two weeks and lose weight, based on the fact that you're not bloody eating much.

I feel better for having ranted now.