Returns

The shutters at Sainsbury's might have been down, but there was still this trolley full of newspapers for return to the right of the shutters. The newspapers included the Times and the Irish Independent from the day before and I wondered about undoing the not very tight knots and helping myself, deciding against, in favour of taking some pictures, achieving one shot in focus out of twenty. Not good enough.

During the proceedings a young man in Sainsbury's clothes popped out of somewhere and wanted to know what I was doing. Maybe he had been whiling away his break flicking through the CCTV channels. Taking a picture of a trolley sezzaye. What for sezzee. Because that is what I do sezzaye. At which point we moved onto overtime rates and his story was that there was no extra pay for working holidays. I mentioned the system of my youth whereby anything over 40 hours Monday to Saturday was time and a half, Sundays double time, bank holidays treble time. He them made some remark to the effect that I must be very old - but added that there were plenty of people who liked to work holidays. I imagine a big shop like this would be fairly quiet and I also imagine that reasonable browsing while on duty, for consumption on the premises, is tolerated, if not permitted. No need to go hungry or thirsty. And maybe Mr. Sainsbury provides microwaves for the greater convenience of his minimum wagers. I thought it more tactful not to make enquiries.

Halfords and Wickes, on the same site, were open.

PS: slightly alarmed that I had to resort to gmaps to recover the name of 'Wickes'. I dare say I would have got there in the end, but much quicker and easier to look at the map.