Things are all go at the moment. I have too much on and am getting tired out.
After a protracted tube journey home I went to Sainsburys to get my dinner. I was feeling miserable and crotchety and on the point of collapse.
As I stood in the long queue waiting to buy my few items, there was a young couple standing behind me (probably both about 30). They were quite cool looking, but had that familiarity that comes of knowing each other too well, and they werent really talking or interacting. After a lengthy pause, the man sighed, turned to his girlfriend and said Im just going to look at the raisins for a couple of minutes.
At least thats how my exhausted brain deciphered the sounds emanating from his mouth. He wandered off.
I chuckled to myself and almost made some comment to the girl about how interesting her boyfriend was, that even after he has been round the shop once, he takes a couple of minutes out to look at a limited selection of dried fruit. I was going to comment that he must think highly of her company if hed rather be examining some wrinkled, dehydrated grapes.
But then I looked over at the bloke and he was nowhere near the dried fruit aisle. What was he doing? He was looking at shaving equipment. Why had he lied?
Then the pieces fell into place. Hes said razors. Of course, that made much more sense and meant he wasnt dull at all. Looking at razors for a couple of minutes is normal for a man. Looking at raisins would be odd.
My foolish misunderstanding resulting from stress and sleep deprivation made me openly laugh. In fact it quite cheered me up. I looked at the bloke looking at razors and then giggled, tried to hide my mirth behind my hand, but looked back at him, examining razors and laughed again. I worried that his girlfriend would think I was laughing at him for looking at razors, like this made him a dullard. But no, she would have misunderstood. It was the fact that he wasnt looking at raisins that was amusing. A man taking a couple of minutes of his time to look at razors is something that no-one in the world could find funny.
Two minutes elapsed. He returned and said Theyre all so expensive and gimmicky these days.
He was right. The razor companies have cleverly turned the razor business into a massive profit spinner, by selling us razors with three blades, each cutting closer than the last, rather than razors with one blade. What they could do is make razors with one blade that shaves as close as the third blade on the new razor (the one that shaves much closer than the first blade and even closer than the second, thus making the other two blades surplus to requirements), but this way they get to sell three blades and they dont even have to sharpen two of them properly. Genius.
I walked home wondering if there was any similar scam that the raisin companies could pull on their customers.
I couldn't think of one. I'm not sure it's possible to be more raisiny than another raisin.
