Right, this needs to be blogged: Sainsbury’s have a serious attitude problem when it comes to alcohol and ID. (Gosh, I feel like Nic writing this!) They’re going way beyond what the law requires, and it’s ridiculous. Here’s the sob story…
After dinner, a group of us headed to a branch of the popular supermarket chain to do a quick bit of emergency shopping. I was after some orange juice, biscuits, milk… that kind of thing. Maybe even a pizza for lunch. It wasn’t exciting. At the checkout, I stand ready to pack my reusable bag (saving the planet, see) with these mundane items when the checkout lady spots a few bottles of beer and asks if I have any ID. ID? What? No? 
“Oh, that’s mine!” says Oliver cheerily as he takes out his proof of age. Great, let’s get going… except no. “I still need to see your ID” the woman says to me insistently. By this point she has resumed scanning, so a pile of goods is building up by the bag which I would be packing if I wasn’t standing there in a confused state. “But I’m not buying any alcohol!” “It doesn’t matter, he is.” “But he’s not with me! He’s doing his own shopping! We’re paying separately!” It won’t wash.
Trying the ‘just ignore her’ approach, I resume trying to pack but am very behind by this point. “Need any help?” asks Owen, who’s waiting for us having sped through a separate checkout, and starts helping me back. “I need ID from you too!” she shouts, accusingly. What? What?!
It turns out that Owen is now part of our ‘group’, and every single person in the group must now produce ID in order for Oliver to buy his own beer with his own ID. Abi and Joe are quickly recruited too, by dint of standing too close or conversing. Trying to negotiate, we offer our Cambridge student cards. Bearing our date of birth and photo, it’s pretty clear we’re all old enough to hypothetically buy the alcohol which we weren’t even trying to buy. But no, that’s not good enough. No, Oliver’s beer must be left behind.
How on earth did they come up with that? Does that mean that a mother or father can’t buy alcohol if their children happen to be with them? Why are we arbitrarily deemed to be a ‘group’ when we’re clearly all making separate purchases and just happen to be together? If we had just gone to separate checkouts, surely we would have defeated this system? What purpose does it serve anyway? Why doesn’t Sainsbury’s understand the most basic concepts of legal liability? How warped an attitude to alcohol are we going to have in this country? Why was I allowed to buy alcohol in the Willesden branch of Sainsbury’s without even being checked for ID myself?
Grrr.
Anyway, so that’s that. In-between being checked for ID for the right to talk to my friends in a supermarket queue, I actually spent my day being rather productive, writing my essay on twentieth century crime rates and watching The Apprentice alongside Abi. (You need to watch that in a group, really. It’s a programme designed for bitchy comments.)
Oh, and for next week’s Themes and Sources class the ‘surprise assignment’ turned out to be the fairly obvious one. Design your own utopia. In a group. Which is really silly, because utopias – indeed any social engineering from scratch project – is entirely pointless, but utopian planning by committee is taking it to another level. If only I was a Communist, this would be a hell of a lot easier…
One thing, however, is for sure. There will be no Sainsbury’s in my utopia.
Aha, the sun is gloriously wonderful isn’t it? I mean, I know I go on about being a winter person because I enjoy stomping around in a Lenin coat, but when the warm summer days actually arrive and you can spend your days lying and chatting on the grass of the Harvey Court gardens it’s hard to feel aggrieved. It’s probably doing wonders for my food budgeting, too, given as it’s so much easier to just forget meals in the summer.*
So… blogging material. Don’t have much, to be honest! The lack of exams (sorry everyone else) is giving the term a mightily relaxed feel. Although on the subject of exams, I do want to officially – because everything I write here is clearly ‘official’ – wish the best of luck to everyone about to do GCSEs. AS and A2 too, of course, but I’m thinking of Natasha in particular here 
Good luck!
*Eating three meals a day is an important part of a healthy lifestyle and can in no way be made up with biscuits, kids.
Swift work made of a Boris poster
Well, as expected, the elections were awful. A wipeout of Labour nationally, a resurgent Tory party riding high, but worst of all (to me) is Ken losing to Boris. I have such a keen sense of the last great survivor who we’ve lost. At least with no chance to screw up a third term we can step back and admire what he did for London – and there’s a lot that Boris owes to him, because he was London’s first mayor and made the job what it is. Independent of New Labour, the number of people who showed up on Thursday to support him prove that he was one of a kind, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll see another like him. One day.
And worse that Boris – much, much worse – is the fact that the BNP candidate won a seat on the Assembly. Powerless, sure, but what a symbol: a great world city elected a nasty man from a viciously racist party as one of its representatives. It certainly makes Boris looks harmless in comparison, I suppose, and we should give him the benefit of the doubt now. He won the election fair and square – though with a little help from the wretched Standard – and I hope he makes the best of it.
Anyway… I’ve bought myself a new phone as a treat of distraction and Lucy came to visit, which was lovely! We had a mini-picnic with Joe, Sophie and a duck (with little ducky feet) this afternoon; Sophie, this photo’s for you!
Come to us, duck!
Stay strong, London. We’ll get through this 
(Oh, and congrats to Brent & Harrow for bucking the trend! Knew my homeland would come through!)
As this post publishes the polls in the London mayoral elections will have just closed, so if the tone is a bit defeatist at least this is coming out safely after every last vote has been cast! Hopefully tomorrow evening will have a surprise to celebrate about, but who can say…? Thanks to everyone who tried to stop him!
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
‘Energetic’ and ‘imaginative’ best describe the 4-year-old. Often impatient and silly, they discover humour and spend a great deal of time being silly and telling you ‘jokes.’ A 4-year-old’s language may range from silly words such as ‘batty-watty’ to profanity. Loud, boisterous laughter may accompany such language. Imagination suddenly becomes greater than life for the 4-year-old, who often confuses reality and ‘make-believe.’ Wild stories and exaggerations are common.
Continuing the trend from last year, I thought I’d let you into the developmental stages of the average 4-year old, as today this blog celebrates yet another birthday! Sometimes I feel a little bit like My Family – scorned by the critics who prefer meatier stuff but plodding along quite happily nonetheless, albeit with drastically declining standards…
Anyway, I had hoped to bring you something in the way of history – perhaps an e-mail happily announcing the blog to the world? – but I found nothing of interest at all back in April 2004, and very very interesting things from May 2004 which unfortunately have nothing to do with this blog. (No, I’m not saying anything more… other than that they prove someone a liar, and someone else deeply forgetful. All in the past, though )
Back in the present: essay title is tricky, and I’m really not sure how I’m going to answer it, but I have some more time yet before I have to decide. And the weather is still lovely!
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
