In response to my own blog - Crying in the Rain - about our local store, this morning I found this little nugget of a story in the Guardian/Observer. I've chosen to post it here without their consent because a) I don't want you all sloping off to read it and b) I don't think they will mind because if they did it would defeat the object of the story and make them as bad as those they so obviously have made newsworthy. You will find a link at the end though if you want to link to it yourselves. Thus, for all sane minded people of the world today I present to you the following:
Store staff call girl, 2, a sweet thief
Staff at Woolworths have shown how seriously they take theft after confronting a two-year-old girl who ate a pic'n'mix sweet that had not been paid for.
Isra Khan was with her mother, Aishah, 23, in a store in Blackburn, Lancashire, when she picked up a 20p sweet and placed it in her mouth. A member of staff shouted 'that's theft' before demanding 20p.
'I can't believe the way this staff member behaved,' said Khan. 'Anyone would have thought we had stolen the Crown Jewels, but the fact is my daughter was simply doing what a lot of other kids often do. She's only two.
'She didn't know that what she was doing was wrong and that when you look at the sweets you can't just take one. Then a member of staff came over and said "that's theft" in front of all the other customers. I couldn't believe what I was hearing - I was humiliated.
'Obviously I agreed to pay for it - but they went really over the top.'
Khan, a college student in Blackburn, says she will not return to the store until she gets an apology.
A spokesman for Woolworths said: 'Pic'n'mix is sold in all Woolworths stores for 69p per 100 grams. For health and safety reasons all confectionery and food products must be paid for before being consumed. The prevention of theft or loss of stock is a priority. While we understand the temptations our pic'n'mix may hold with young children the responsibility lies with the adult accompanying them to ensure they are appropriately supervised.'
Health and Safety? Have you ever seen how many sweets are on the floor by the pic'n'mix stand? More criminal is the amount of sweets you actually get for 69p. A decent bag of sweets in the Jolly Roger will cost you anywhere upwards of £3. Well, I'll tell you what Mr F W Woolworth (hereafter known as FuckWit - that could turn into good game), teaching my children how to spell properly is a huge priority for me... how about just sneaking that 'k' back on the end of your brand from hell and doing us all a favour?
If I were you Mrs Kahn, I would wait for your apology and then tell them to stick it back where it came from because they won't learn a thing from it.
On the plus side of yesterday, many excellent things happened (apologies if that sounds a little too Bill and Ted for comfort). The new series of Doctor Who kicked off with a bang and, you know what - Catherine Tate isn't as bad as everybody thought she would be. In fact, she's pretty damn good. It was a real kids episode with lots of undertones which is just what the er... doctor ordered. It's gonna be a good series...
Better still, JJ and I hatched stage four of 'the plan'. We are currently busy instigating the return of our radio show Black Dye White Noise. Oh yeah!
Our new home will be at the UKs biggest internet rock station: ROCK24/7. You should check it out, there's a whole stack of good shows on there. I have no idea about scheduling but the show is pitched to run twice a month in the early days and will be a mixture of old and new songs, sessions and live cuts - we'll also throw in a few stories and some laughs for good measure. Maybe I'll drift around and do some book and movie things too.
I'm scheduled to do a promo interview with my good buddy and station honcho, Simon, next Saturday afternoon so I'll keep you clued in on the timings for that and all playlists will be posted here. Somewhere, I have old playlists from the last time the show ran which I shall post here and here if you're the super curious variety of human.
J being J and me being me, we didn't stick to this religiously. We threw an awful lot of other stuff in too though I'm damned if I can remember what - but there was a cool Bowie mix of Rebel Never Gets Old.
Charlotte emailed across her latest piece of art for Too Hot for Dogs last night. It's a killer piece... she's nailing my ass to the wall with this stuff and I'm constantly having to rewrite and raise the game which is no bad thing.
This is a milestone of a piece for the book as I'm thinking it might be the cover of the first issue. With some slight squabbling amongst myself for a title, it will either be called An Immaculate Misconception or Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I've dummied it up anyway and it's looking good to me. I may have to mail it to a couple of geeky pals and see what they think in that "would you pick it up out of curiosity based on the cover alone?" kind of way.
More shortly...
