I’ve not had any election correspondence from the Lib Dem, Tory, Independent or BNP. Only leaflets were 1 labour, 2 Morley Borough Independent.
Round the town, a few Elliott (MBI) went up on telegraph poles at the weekend and I saw a couple of BNP ones as well this morning on Britannia Road, Morley’s bypass.
“People like you are voting BNP“.
Yea, right, Chinny reck-on, etc…
When out shopping at ASDA, David (aged 8.5) asked if he could have some Pick ‘n Mix rather than the normal three bags for a pound stuff we get him (cheeky monkeys, fried eggs, squishy strawberries etc.) We did point out that you got a lot less but he was willing to invest a pound of his pocket money so we helped him choose and weigh. There is a simple scale next to the area for estimating weight and it is charged at 52p per 100g so I told him that if he went up to 200g on the scale it would be about a pound (indeed slightly less as the pointer was a little over the zero mark).
Sweets subsequently chosen and weighed, we checked out and headed home. I had been a little surprised that the sweets had cost us £1.66 but we were pushed for timeand let it go (David goes to something called Kid’s club on Saturday mornings which is a sort of Sunday School and we fit shopping in after his swim and before the bible bashing). However, we persuaded David to hold off on eating the sweets (which wasn’t easy) and weighed them at home- 168g on our digital kitchen scales, not the 320g the receipt claimed. So, the Pic ‘n Mix scales had been roughly right and the checkout ones had over-weighed nearly double.
Karen’s reaction was to put it down to experience (after all, it was only 75p or so and it would cost us that in driving back to ASDA) but I was keen to be fair to David, as our careful explanation of how it all worked to him was somewhat negated by the reality. So, after dropping David off at his regular Kid’s Club event, back I dutifully trotted, to the “Happy to Help” desk.
They re-weighed them on another till and they came up 173g, well within the margin of error for my cheap kitchen scales. They were most apologetic, gave me the £1.66 back (in cash) and got someone to do a calibration check on the offending checkout. They did say it was more likely that something else had been on the weighing platform at the time rather than be wrong as they were regularly checked. However, we had used “Personal Shopper” so there were only two exception items, some battered Jaffa Cakes from the reduced shelf and the bag of sweeties (everything else was bagged up in the trolley). Maybe it was an elbow or a pen…
So, it pays to complain. David got to keep his pound, perhaps ASDA avoided a weights and measures incident (in the unlikely event that the scales were out of calibration and they were mystery shoppered that day). I got out of some housework (well, postponed it, anyway!) and even ended up with a couple of sweets from David. I also got the satisfaction of knowing I was right, something not the default state for a bloke in marriage!
Morley has a second hand music shop in the Bottoms area, the shop is called “Sounds ‘n Stuff” and the owner, Stewart Pollard, also teaches guitar to youngsters.
He has now come up with the bright idea of forming the Morley music Trust and held an inaugural concert last Friday.
The event kicked off with a session from fresh faced local Band Tytania. It wasn’t to my taste, sounding rather Iron maiden/Black Sabbath, but what would I know, I’m on the home stretch to 50 so hardly qualify as “the youth of today”. I found their music loud, rather turgid and also rather dull to watch but as far as I knew it was their own compositions and they played/sang competently. Certainly their camp followers cheered them on.
The second performer was Ricky Harding, a small, white haired rather friendly looking chap with faun coloured shoes & slacks that didn’t make him look Rock & Roll at all. He reminded me of an elderly uncle with witty banter and there was no immediate clue that he was an Axe God- until he started playing. Ricky could play in a wide range of styles and held the audience with his dexterity. It had been billed as a guitar demonstration and it was exactly that, he explained the style and purpose of all that he played. His opening song had hit a few discordant twangs and he later apologised for this, having inadvertently cut his fingernails rather too close to the show.
The final set was from a band called GreenMac who played a mixture of blues style numbers and early Fleetwood Mac songs, being a sort of tribute band to Peter Green, the pre-massive success days of Fleetwood Mac before the Girls joined and they went big time. The main man in Green Mac is Dusty Miller, who runs a guitar shop in Leeds. These guys looked like rockers and played a tight set, although the addition of a vintage Hammond might have nicely rounded the sound to my ears. Dusty sounds a bit like Clapton when singing and my favourite song from their set had to be Man of the World, the least favourite being Albatross that I find just as lethargic today as when I first heard it in 1969. (I much preferred Lily the Pink and Obladi-Oblada also in the charts at the time).
UPDATE- Corrected as per comments, cheers.
Powered by WordPress
