What happened to me in the Kiddies Dept of The Other M&S in York centre

I finished my Christmas shopping today. In M&S I found a shop assistant with a sense of humour. I was buying some clothes that were clearly aimed at small children - the size of them should have made this clear but if this had left some doubt the labels would have cleared it up. They indicated that both items were for children under four years old. Since I am 31 years old and six foot two there could have been no doubt that these items were not for me.

I went to pay for them and the shopping lady took me through the chip and pin motions. She then made as if to give me a bag for them. I said that I was fine for a bag - and I was fine since I'd done a lot of shopping already and had acquired several bags in addition to the rucksack I'd brought with me. I didn't need to add to the world's woes by putting an extra plastic bag in it.

And this is where the lady was funny, so pay attention.

She asked me (because I'd said I didn't need a bag) if I was going to put the items on now. Clearly I wasn't planning to do this as I am old and tall as I mentioned earlier. I can hence deduce that she was making a joke. She was pretending that me, a large man, was going to wear some children's clothing in the cold December cold. Funny! She didn't smile like you'd expect her to though. I wouldn't expect full on laughing (like I do when I make a joke), but a little smile to show she meant the remark in jest would have been all I needed. There was no smile.

I replied back, "yeah, I'm going to wear them now". Because there is no higher humour than sarcasm. And she still didn't really smile. I liked her since she was so deadpan.

Then I bent to put the items in my bag, left the clothes shop and went on my merry (because it's Christmas and everything is merry at Christmas) way.

Later it occurred to me that because she was behind a counter and I was in front of the counter, she might just have assumed I had a small child with me who was not tall enough to be seen over the counter. Therefore when she asked if I wanted to put the clothes on, she meant onto a small child now not onto me now. She would then have been puzzled by my sarcasm and the way I put the items into a bag rather than onto a child.

But if that had been her intended meaning then she could have offered to remove the tags for me. And she didn't.

So I am left a little confused. One of the following things happened.

1. I found a funny, deadpan shop assistant
2. I found a well-meaning but confused and ultimately wrong shop assistant
3. I completely misheard a shop assistant who asked me if I'd like to look at their range of futons.

I'm going to stick with the first option because it reinforces how nice everyone is at Christmas.

Multiple 'rithms

At breakfast this morning I was discussing abucuses (abaci?) with my mother and father. We weren't really sure how they worked or how you did hard sums on them, but I was fairly sure that I had known this when I was younger and that there were various algorithms that could be used to do different kinds of sums (ie hard ones like long division). This confused my parents at first as they didn't know what algorithms were and had confused them with logarithms.

Whilst the two words do seem to be anagrams of one another, they do not mean the same thing and after I'd explained what an algorithm was we talked about logarithms instead (isn't breakfast exciting in my family?).

I told mother that we don't really use log tables any more because of the calculators and computers that we now have. She got a bit worried about the implications of this reliance on technology should Islamic terrorists wipe out all our computers or the internet or something - how would we do logarithms then if we'd all thrown our tables away?

I pointed out that should that happen, doing logarithms would be the least of our problems as society would likely start to fall apart and we'd all have to run to the hills with our guns and our cans of beans. She thought that should such an attack happen then she would go to work as normal and just try and carry on. This was a little odd since she is retired and I'm almost certainly sure her work never once required her to use a logarithm, but I suppose she was speaking hypothetically. Maybe if she did go to work as normal we could all phone her up from the hills every time we needed a logarithm doing. I guesss it would keep her out of trouble.

I used to know a joke about log tables.

After this excitement I went to do my final pre-Christmas Christmas Shopping. This was also exicting as I was not in Kansas (York) anymore.

Nearly there now...

I finished off most of my Christmas shopping today - still a few bits to do, but I plan on going out again tomorrow for that. York seemed quite empty of people - certainly much less busy than the previous couple of Saturdays which have been fairly horrid.

Now all I have to do is wrap everything - think I'll leave that until I get to my parents' house though. Unwrapped presents should weigh less than wrapped presents and so they'll be easier to carry on the train!

Wii-ther Forecast

When I woke this morning the disc slot of the Wii was all of a blue glow. This meant it had something to tell me. When I turned it on there was a message waiting saying that (wait for it...)... that the weather forecast facility was now live. How exciting.

I loaded it up and it told me that it was zero degrees and foggy. Whilst I can't vouch for the exact temperature being correct, it was definitely foggy. And cold. I could judge the fogginess by looking out the window. And the cold from when I went outside later.

So that was useful.

It has been really cold and foggy all day. I'm glad I have got all the running out of the way - I wouldn't have wanted to go out this evening even if I had time (which I don't due to being going for a Christmas curry).

In other news, my Christmas shopping is going really, really badly and it depresses me to even write about it. Still five shopping days to go though.