We parked in Sainsbury's car park in Chiswick, as you get two free hours there and you can go and do your shopping elsewhere in that time and you don't even have to buy anything at Sainsbury's. Yeah, I am beating the system from within and sticking it to "the man". "The Man" in this case is Mr Sainsbury. Though he needn't worry too much, because actually we needed to get some stuff from Sainsbury's too, but we were going to do that later. So for a giddy 90 minutes we were like a modern day Chiswick based version of Bonnie and Clyde.
We ended up buying some stuff from M and S and some cumbersome items for our kitchens (a pedal bin and a small set of steps if you are interested) - which I think is what Bonnie and Clyde would probably have done too. Diane also wanted some printing paper. She felt we were too weighed down already and told me to forget about it, but Ryman's is near to Sainsbury's and I figured that we could get all the stuff into a shopping trolley and then comfortably get it to the car and then if we chose drive off without giving "the Man" (Ian Sainsbury) any of our money. It would be a Pyrrhic victory as we needed some stuff from Sainsbury's like I said, so we probably wouldn't do that. But the opportunity was there and at this moment this was all that mattered to me.
There were 5 reams for the price of 4 in Ryman's. That was more paper than I had anticipated buying, but a bargain is a bargain and I could have half of it and Sainsbury's was only a spit away. I could do this. Diane needed the toilet. That was OK, there was a toilet in the Starbucks attached to Sainsbury's. This could be a double victory. As I loaded the cart, she could use the toilet, even though we hadn't bought anything at Starbucks. We would be sticking it to two "the mans", Ian Starbucks was now firmly in our sights. It mattered not that we'd bought a coffee there when we had arrived. This was a separate visit and we were not entitled to use the facilities. This felt good.
We struggled the few metres to the shop front and there was a trolley abandonned there. This was perfect. I told Diane to go to the toilet whilst I loaded the trolley, which I did with some effort as the bulky items were hard to fit in. I was then going to unload them in the car whilst she went to get the stuff from Sainsbury's... which admittedly slightly spoiled the Bonnie and Clyde bit, but at least I would be using the Sainsbury's facilities without buying anything and she'd have used the Starbucks ones. So we were still pretty rebellious.
But once she had gone, presumably as some kind of ironic punishment for me being a comedian, I discovered that the trolley I had loaded everything into was malfunctioning. It's security lock had come on and the wheels wouldn't move. "This isn't fair," I cried internally to the gods of irony, "I never did the joke about shopping trolleys not working. Quite the opposite, I have probably actually done jokes about how that joke is wrong and actually shopping trolleys are generally very good." But perhaps the gods of irony thought that this just made things all the more ironic.
And now I was stuck. There were no other shopping trolleys around and there was too much stuff for me to carry on my own and Diane was in the toilet and then would be heading into Sainsbury's. If I went in search of another trolley, one of the Chiswick thieves could be off with some of my stuff (or all of it if two Chiswick thieves were present). All seemed lost. But I thought, "What would Touching the Void-o do at this point? Would he give in and lie down and die or would he somehow struggle to get the stuff to the car?" Obviously he would not give in.
So I determined to drag the over-laden trolley into the shop in the hope of finding another trolley. It was a struggle and I had to go up a ramp, but I managed to pull the heavy object the ten feet required and got another trolley (which i checked worked first). Then I transferred the load. All was fine. Diane saw me on the way out from her illegal toileting and helped me.
But as we pushed the trolley into Sainsbury's the security alarm went off. We hadn't stolen anything from Sainsbury's - how could we? We hadn't even been in there - but evenso the machine somehow sensed our indiscretion. Even though we intended to do some shopping there now, it could not make a judgement call on that. It let the world see what cheats we were. Ian Sainsbury had seen all and knew all. I realised it was he (not the irony gods, what was I thinking? I must be mad) who had made the trolley malfunction. It was all part of his scheme to pay us back.
The security guard came over and saw we had nothing stolen and let us go onwards. But we had to go out another set of doors to get to the carpark and the alarms went off there too.
It was enough of a warning for me. We came back and bought more groceries. We had tried to beat the system, but the system had beaten us. Ian Sainsbury and Ian Starbucks see all.
