Hi Everyone

 

We hope all is well with you and your world.

 

We apologise for the lateness of the newsletter but we are so busy with hoards of customers and staying open in the evenings, that we just don’t get time to deal with the website updates and writing newsletters….. So the July News letter ends up as a July/August one and the August Newsletter ends up as an September/October one and we manage to miss a couple in between. 

 

Welcome to all those people who are receiving our newsletter for the first time. You will soon find that unlike other newsletters we are not trying to do the “hard Sell” thing. It’s more about bringing a little insanity into an otherwise sane world…. Or is it the other way round…. We will let you decide on that one.  

 

Anyway, we have the usual mountain of new stuff for you to see on the 3 what’s new pages http://www.lavenderpillow.co.uk/Whats_new.html

Or if you want to browse the whole site, go to www.lavenderpillow.co.uk  Many of you may be wondering how we manage to keep cramming all this new stuff into our shop every month….. We must admit that we are as puzzled as you are …..We live in constant fear that one day the shop will just explode like some sort of volcano and bury the whole of Mevagissey under a thick layer of alternative giftware. But every time a new item is delivered, a gap seems to open up on a shelf somewhere. There must be some sort of Magick going on here. It’s just as well that we have lots of visitors filling the village at the moment to buy some of this stuff. However, no matter how busy we get, Bazz always manages to find time for a quick rant or two. 

 

So what has sent Bazz into rant mode this month…… Well firstly there is the Great British institution “The Queue”

We spend a lot of time standing in queues at the bank, at the post office sending out our mail order stuff, at the super market etc. We also have the opportunity to observe people queuing at our counter in the shop. This gives us a great insight into the queuing process and the inherent problems with the system. You would think that a basic first come first served approach would be a fair, amicable and trouble free way of dealing with the situation, but then you realise that the major constituent of any queue is people and there the problems start……. So here is the top ten of people you dread finding ahead of you in a queue. I’m sure you will recognise most of them and if you find yourself somewhere in the list, be warned, that each time you visit the post office you are probably going to have a near death experience.

 

1. The Change Man – This guy turns up at the bank holding two very large and heavy bags full of 1p 2p 5p and 20p coins divided up into hundreds of little bags which the cashier has to weigh. He then demands that these are exchanged for bags of 50p and £1 coins which again have to be counted and weighed. This is particularly annoying when there is only one cashier position open. Who are these people? Where do all these coins come from? The only people who need to do this are people who own amusement arcades, but there are only two arcades in St. Austell but dozens of change men. We feel that most of them are just malicious individuals who go to the bank every day and change their life savings into different denominations just to annoy everyone.
2. Betty No Mates – No queue would be complete without a dear sweet old lady who completes her business and then engages the cashier in a lengthy conversation about her children and her grandchildren (and in particularly annoying cases her great grandchildren), the weather, the price of carrots and what her neighbours have been up too and what she had for dinner last night….and I’m 87 you know……and my hip replacement is giving me so much trouble. This goes on until you feel that by the time you get served you will probably be saying “I’m 87 you know”  It is just so hard to stop yourself from screaming “This is a bloody bank not the bloody Samaritans”
3. The two stage purchaser – They get to the till and let cashier ring in their purchases and suddenly say “Oh I almost forgot…..” They then go wandering off down the shop leaving the cashier and the other people in the queue behind them tearing their hair out…. They then spend 10 minutes staring vacantly at some shelf somewhere off in the distance, completely oblivious the great up welling of hatred they are generating.
4. Polly Two Purses – She arrives at the counter and the cashier rings in her purchases and says “that will be £1.60 please” At this point Polly seems totally surprised at the fact that she has been asked for some money…… she then digs into her huge handbag and eventually pulls out a purse (The rest of queue all breathe a sigh of relief) She rummages in the purse and after several minutes says “Oh it’s the wrong purse” (The rest of queue let out a huge sigh of disappointment) She them rummages in the handbag again and pulls out another purse and after a lengthy hunt through the inordinately large number of sections in the purse, eventually she pulls out a £20 note (the rest of the queue smile and think to themselves “that could have been worse”)……. The cashier puts the £20 note in the till and hands Polly £18.40 change. Polly, who has taken advantage of this pause in the proceedings to put her purse safely away in her handbag, seems totally surprised that she has been handed change. She rummages in the handbag, pulls out a purse, says “Oh wrong Purse” (Queue groans) finds other purse, puts the notes in it, puts purse away, digs for other purse (Queue starts losing the will to live) pulls out a previously unseen third purse, puts the 20p coins in it (she saves 20p pieces and uses them to buy bingo tickets), digs for yet another purse for the rest of the coins, (queue starts slashing their wrists) “Oh wrong purse”, empties entire contents of handbag onto counter, ………… Do I need to go on…….      
5. Nobby No Pin – He hands the cashier a credit card. The cashier puts it in the machine and it says that the card has expired. Nobby says “Oh has it, oh yeah I’ve got a new one in here somewhere” The cashier inserts the new card and asks Nobby to enter his pin number….. Nobby says “Oh I don’t remember my pin, can’t I sign for it” The casier explains that since February you have to use the pin number and you are not allowed to sign anymore. Nobby says “Oh, I’ll try this one”. Machine rejects pin. Nobby tries again. Machine rejects pin, Nobby hunts in his wallet and pulls out a bit of paper and tries again. Wonder of wonders… the machine accepts the pin. However his bank declines the transaction. Nobby says “ I don’t know why that happened…. I’ve got loads of money in my account….” He then stares blankly at the cashier apparently expecting the cashier to call his bank and sort everything out for him. It eventually dawns on him that the cashier is going to do nothing of the sort. “OK” says Nobby“ I’ve got another card here…. Lets try that one….. if I can remember the pin number”…….    
6. Matey bloke – Imagine the scene, you are tenth in the queue at the post office and who should walk in…. but Matey Bloke…… You know the one, every town has one, he seems to know everyone and has even tried to befriend you on several occasions. He marches straight up to the bloke who is third in the queue and says “Hello Bob me old mate. I haven’t seen you for weeks. How’s the missus blah blah blah” Thereby insinuating himself as 4^th in the queue. The rest of the queue mutter lots but no one is prepared to make a big deal about it. This is where Matey bloke realises he can get away with murder and notices Fred has got to the counter. He then pulls off his Coup de gras…. He shouts over the heads of the people in front of him “Allright Fred…. Do us a favour and get me 10 1^st class stamps… saves holding up all these people…. I’ll give you the money for them.” Off trots Matey bloke grinning about how he has successfully out flanked the whole queue. As he passes you he says “Allright mate how ya doing”. You scowl at him and struggle to contain the stream of expletives welling up inside you.
7. Daisy Dropsy – You are in the queue at ASDA and breath a sigh of relief as the person in front of you gets to the till. They have stacked up all their purchases on the conveyor belt in such a precarious manner that the second the cashier starts the conveyor belt moving…… six tubs of yoghurt, a two litre bottle of coke, a litre bottle of milk and a massive sack of kitty litter plummet to the floor at your feet and all explode in a mad fizzy, gloopy crunchy mess all over your best jeans. You then have to wait 10 minutes until the cashier attracts the attention of a disinterested supervisor, who then sends a hamstrung sloth like halfwit off to replace all the damaged items. The tannoy system spends 15 minutes asking for a team of ASDA Aces to come and clean up the mess. The ASDA Aces (who are sadly misnamed, as we all know they are actually jokers) are on coffee break. The supervisor then gives in, closes the checkout and moves the cashier to an adjacent checkout. She then utters those dreaded words “Do you all want to come over to this one”………. There then ensues a mad scramble where the 5 people behind you manage to form new queue at the new checkout in reverse order. You manage to wade out of the gloopy mess, and start looking for someone to kill.
8. Marty Morning After – So there you are, it’s 5 minutes before the bank closes on Saturday morning and you are in a queue…. and it is a queue you can’t escape from because if you don’t pay your credit card off this morning you are going to be charged huge amounts of interest……. Then your nose goes into spasm…… The nose is a very sensitive organ and a well trained nose can probably work out what the dishevelled bleary eyed bloke in front of you has been doing for the last 12 hours. To your horror, you find your nose is telling you that this bloke went out with his mates last night and drank 12 pints of old throkmarstons peculiar bishops twisted nipple (or some other aptly named real ale). They decided to go for a curry when the pub shut and he had a thermo nuclear vindaloo with extra chillies and garlic. He washed it down with a bottle of house (paint stripper) red wine. One his way home, he got very sweaty carrying the two large litter bins he made friends with en route and slipped and fell in a huge pile of doggydoos in the park. When he got home he felt suddenly tired and went to bed with all his clothes on. He woke this morning and wondered why someone had put diced carrots in his bed. The only things he could find in the fridge for breakfast were six hard boiled eggs and half a kebab he had stuffed in there last week. He was in a bit of a rush to get to the bank so decided not to change his clothes or wash and just make do with a quick squirt of the body spray his ex girlfriend gave him last Christmas (The Skunx effect – promise of solitude fragrance). He is now standing in the queue in front of you wondering what he had eaten that has given him such a bad bought of flatulence and looking forward to going home for a nice hot bath once he has paid off his credit card bill.
9. The Born Again – You are standing in a queue and the guy behind you notices that you are wearing a pentagram. A sparkle comes to his eye and he says in a voice load enough for the whole supermarket to hear “Repent your witchcraft, renounce the devil and turn to Jesus”…… As much as you would enjoy a lengthy theological discussion, you just know that this guy is not prepared to listen to a single word you have to say on the subject. It’s not that you have any problem with Christians… you just hold a different point of view. You just want to pay for your shopping and get home before the ice cream melts. So despite being a caring, peace loving gentle individual, you find yourself confirming everything he believes about you and saying “If you say one more word…… I will be forced to hurt you…… hurt you very badly indeed… It’s been nice talking to you but I need to scream now… goodbye”    
10. Mad People – You are standing in a queue in an alternative gift shop in Mevagissey and this bloke starts telling you about the shops website and how if you sign the website guestbook he will send you his monthly newsletter. The shop was Ok, the people seemed Ok and the website was quite amusing so you sign the guestbook. Then you start receiving these insane ramblings in your inbox. It’s only then that you realise you are dealing with mad people and they have your email address. There is a simple answer…. If you do not wish to receive our newsletters in future, just reply to this email with the word “EEEEEEK!” in the subject field, and we will not bother you again.                   

 

I’m sure there are more and I’m sure you will let me know about any I’ve missed. But what a lot of people don’t realise is that supermarkets like to keep you in a queue so you will stuff your trolley with all the impulse buy items that line every checkout isle………..However, some get it right and some sadly do not have a clue…… Last week we were standing in a queue at ASDA (behind Daisy Dropsy who had turned the checkout into an orange juice lake.) so we had plenty of time to survey the huge array of irresistible impulse buy items that had been provided. ASDA just don’t seen to have a clue do they…… Now Rose and I are fairly impulsive people when it comes to buying stuff (pink flamingo hand bags and purple cat door stops in our shop prove this) but could ASDA tempt us with anything……. NO!....... the items on display included…… A set of cheap wood screws that looked like they were blunt and the heads would fall off if you tightened them up too tight……. A table tennis set which included bats and ping pong balls but no net…. Very cheap batteries of the type that last about 5 minutes and then leak acid all over the place. A winter handwarmer (in July)………. Some plastic jewellery made by Disney with a picture of a Disney character neither of us recognised……. A selection of jelly and marshmallow sweets that even a famine victim would think twice about putting in their mouths………. And this was the pick of the bunch.

 

Rest assured we will not subject you to this sort of torment…. If you find yourself behind Nora No Mates in the queue at The Lavender Pillow, we have now provided an amusing slide show on our laptop to help you stay calm and avoid killing people.

 

In the interest of fairness and just to prove that Bazz is not really a grumpy old git. He has promised that next month he will refrain from his usual monthly rant and introduce a new feature to the newsletter, “Things that have made Bazz smile”…… Yes there are some…… Honest.

 

Anyway, We have rambled on far too long this month, so we had better let you get back to the real world. So until next month(ish).

 

Bright Blessings

 

From Bazz & Rose

The Lavender Pillow