Let puts into context how much this FANTASTICAL BLUNDER will affect my final year until I graduate. For the next 10 months, I will have to order-in my groceries. I’ll start at the beginning...
Having moved to a delightfully small but independent studio flat around 10 minutes walk from my engineering school and after serenading it with gifts of toiletries and other odds and ends, I was finally ready to discover my local area.
A view of Leeds City
A wee nosy around the neighbourhood yielded the usual interesting amenities you’d expect in a huge city such as Leeds: a closeby hospital, a few small businesses, a couple takeaways and a nice Thai Restaurant. I was impressed. I did discover however, a lovely little newsagent around 200 metres from my door. Not to be excessive but it was perfect. Freaking PERFECT. Exactly what you’d wish for in a newsagent. It was open till 10pm seven days a week and was stalked full of everything from fresh veg to can openers (which I’ll come back to). This’ll do nicely, I thought.
During the initial discovery of the local shop, I went inside and introduced myself. The sweet middle-aged Indian lady welcomed me, and we chatted for a while. She told me that she ran the shop with her husband and that they have been there many years. I explained, when she asked me what I’m doing here, that I had just moved to the area to complete my final year of studies. We chatted for a while until I finished the polite conversation paying for a tub of Ben&Jerry’s and assuring her that I’ll see her later, no doubt many times as I’m now in the neighbourhood.
Fast forward a couple days and I find myself in need of a Tin opener. So I take the 3-minute walk to the local and find myself face-to-face with an Indian man, whom I can only assume to be ‘The Husband’. ‘Alright’, he said in a broad Yorkshire accent. ‘Alright’, I replied. I wasn’t in a particularly conversational mood as my stomach had been nagging me the entire morning.
The night previous to the encounter, I had just downed the remainder of the cookie dough, which as I write this occurs to me may have been the bandit at play.
After a few minutes of obvious pondering and stomach instability in tow, I decided it would be easier if I asked the gentleman at the desk if he had a tin opener and thus point it out to me.
‘It’s right there under the scissors,’ he pointed to the middle of a stall of kitchen/house appliances. Searching within the wreath of kitchen/house appliances, I struggle to find it. ‘It’s right there! Down abit!’ he exclaims. Frantically, I gather my bearings. Nothing more degrading than struggling at such elementary tasks as finding a product that the shop wishes to sell you. Or so I thought. Slightly bent, I hunched over to sort through the stack of appliances with no luck. I could hear him now, the shopkeeper, walking towards me. His breathe slightly ague from the exertion. I must find this tin opener now; I think to myself. I had scanned the middle to top of the stall. I needed to check lower. He was almost directly behind me as I made the sudden movement down…
RRRRRIP….
A cloud lifted, my stomach suddenly felt back to normal and for a split second I was at peace. That was, until the horror set in. I couldn’t believe it. The disbelief, the horror of what I had just done made me freeze. The man, to his ultimate credit, acted as though nothing had happened as I awkwardly whispered sorry. I managed to finally locate the tin opener at last and gingerly took it to the till where the wee man had repositioned himself. He then asked me an innocuous question which only served to remind me that I had not only shamed myself but my country too. ‘You’re Scottish, aren’t you?’.
Hope you all enjoyed that traumatic episode of mine haha .. That was my first 'blog'. Hopefully if people like it, I'll keep writing.
Being a newbie, I didn’t realise that for mass verification I should include a pic in the #introduceyourself section.
Hey man!
Thank you Sergei