‘We don’t take cash,’ said the boy behind the counter in Pret after I tried to hand him a £5 note and two pound coins. ‘My’ ham and cheese baguette and bottle of Coke sat in a brown paper bag on the counter and a woman standing beside me grimaced as she waited to be
‘Next!’ shouted the bouffant-haired lady dressed in a terrifyingly crisp green and white skirt suit. She was sitting behind the glass-screened reception desk of the private hospital where my mother had just had her knee replaced. This formidable dame I took to be a positive sign of the excellence of a healthcare establishment where one
When we put the house on the market, my environmentally conscious neighbours disappeared on a holiday so long I asked another neighbour where they had gone. ‘On a cruise,’ she said, but I thought that unlikely, because these people have a book on climate change on a shelf near their front window, so how on
The man in the phone shop greeted me with what I presume is a look specifically designed and reserved for those asking to cancel their contracts. This look could best be described as ‘You are dead to me. Get out.’ I have been trying to cancel this contract for many years. I never use the
Driving through the road widening works at junction ten, I noticed a horse being ridden down a muddy passageway that was about to become the hard shoulder. It had not yet been tarmacked, but the diggers had cleared away the trees from the slice of heathland and it was being flattened, in readiness for surfacing
‘My pronouns are xe and xem’ said the name badge on the supermarket checkout person’s uniform. And I thought, good for xem, because that wasn’t ruining grammar. How to explain that the transgender community are doing my head in because they are stealing words? (I don’t mind them inventing new ones.) I want to explore
‘No way am I having it now,’ said a friend, as she insisted on discussing the latest scare stories. And she shook her head so violently that her long blonde hair was flung sideways across her face, and the resemblance to an anti-vaxxer in the throes of hysteria was extremely convincing. But then she regained
The nurse fixed me with a disapproving stare: ‘Why is there such a gap between these prescriptions?’ I had gone for a blood pressure check so I could get my HRT, but when she looked at my notes she could see that they last prescribed it years ago. In return for countless thousands of pounds
The county council insist the unmade track leading to my house is nothing to do with them, while the parish council change their position depending on how they feel on the day. If they want to boss us about, they infer they are leasing the land from Surrey county council, along with the rest of
The same resolution every year goes nowhere. Stop fighting battles and just have a nice, quiet life, I tell myself – and by the second day of the year I’m up to my eyeballs in kerfuffles. Having sworn off helping anyone with anything ever again for the grand total of three hours of 2023, from
‘You’re one of them anti-vaxxers,’ said the brusque northerner who was seated opposite me at a friend’s supper party. ‘Why do you think I got Covid and was really ill even though I’m up to date on my jabs?’ And he fixed me with a murderous stare. I said: ‘I think you’ve got the wrong
‘Then I got taken hostage in Iran,’ said the lady sitting next to me in the hairdresser’s as she was having her hair crimped. ‘Really?’ said the hairdresser, who had the flat irons on her hair and was making her look like an 1980s pop star. ‘And how was that?’ He was obviously stuck in
‘You’re very easy to deal with, I must say,’ said the tall, handsome vet who was examining the spaniel. I laughed. ‘That’s not what the last vet said.’ The last vet sacked me after I asked to see my dog’s notes. After a long and arduous battle with corporate vetdom, I made my way down
‘Notice from your vets’ said the email subject. I clicked and there was a letter telling me that my vet was sacking me as a client with two weeks’ notice, even though I had a sick dog. This was because I had asked to see my dog’s notes and discovered they had been discussing me,
‘If AA wants to make its meetings safe, then maybe it should ban alcoholics,’ said the builder boyfriend and I had to admit, he had cracked it. There was me getting all wound up about why more and more of the meetings in Surrey won’t let the bricklayer in because of his criminal convictions and
With only five to ten more years to work out how to log in to my pension plan I need to get a move on. The Fidelity website is so impenetrable to someone like me that, aged 50, I fear I will have run out of time to get access to ‘planviewer’ by the time
The children walked with flaming torches ahead of the float bearing the bonfire queen which was headed for the towering monstrosity of pallets and tree branches on the village green. The builder boyfriend and I stood at the front of the crowds lining the road as the procession came through in the darkness and it
By the time I got through to someone at British Gas to complain about them holding £491 of my money in credit, they were holding £924. This was made up of £858 of my own money plus £66 from the government support scheme, the first instalment of which had just hit my account. So there
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for something to catch a mouse that won’t cause it any distress,’ said the young chap who had walked into the hardware cabin at the farm shop with his girlfriend. The pair of them had briefly perused the shelves where the well assorted pest control items were neatly stacked and, not
‘I’d like my money back please’ was what I was waiting to tell British Gas, if they ever stopped the deafening rock music of their recorded hold message to answer the phone. My account was £490 in credit, like it was a savings account. Only it wasn’t a savings account for me, and now energy
