Private Thoughts Made Public

As I’m a bit lazy (i.e. can’t always get out of bed on time in the morning) I didn’t have a chance to make myself a packed lunch. So I went to Tesco’s to but myself a sandwich. While I was there, I thought I’d have a browse at the dvd’s, as is often my wont. As you may have guessed from looking to your left and seeing the image presented there, I bought myself the Live Aid DVD. The irony of also buying a sandwich and a bottle of diet coke along with a dvd which raises money to help stop people dying of starvation in Africa was not lost on me. I wonder if the guy behind me in the queue spotted the irony as well, or if he was just annoyed he had to wait while the checkout assistant went to get the actual dvd’s for me?
Anyway, I’m going to enjoy watching this again. Can you believe it was 19 and a half years ago? That means that pretty much everyone ay school, college and university today were either too young to remember watching it or hadn’t been born when it all happened. Yet for people of my generation it seems like, well, not exactly like yesterday, but it does seem like it was only last year. I don’t remember too much about the day myself, the only thing I do remember was watching it in amazement at the sheer amount of organisation involved, thoroughly enjoying Queen’s set (as I think everyone did) and waiting for the next act I liked to come on. There were plenty of people playing on the day who’s music I wasn’t particularly into, and it will be interesting for me to find out if I will actually sit through everyone’s performances again.
I feel a warm glow of satisfaction knowing that every penny I spent on the dvd will go to help people who need it a lot more than I do, but I also found out that Tesco have discounted it by ten pounds. According to Amazon, the RRP is £40, yet I paid just under £30. Surely for something like this, where all the revenue goes to charity, shops shouldn’t be allowed to discount it? From what I can tell, Tesco’s (and I presume many other outlets) are diddling Live Aid out of thousands of pounds of potential revenue by selling the item at less than the recommended retail price.
So there I was, sitting in my car in Tesco’s car park, eating my sandwich and reading the Live Aid booklet (and still very much aware of the stark difference between what I was doing and what I was reading about), when I felt a bump against the side of my car. I looked up, and noticed that there’s a lady putting her toddler into the back seat of a Toyota Land Cruiser parked on the passenger side of my car. She’d emptied her shopping trolley and pushed it into the empty space on my side of the car, whereupon gravity took over and caused it to roll down the slope into my door. She, of course, didn’t bat an eyelid, she just carried on strapping her son into this huge monstrosity of a vehicle with scant regard for anyone else’s property. I can tell that the most off-road that car’s ever going to get is the car park of the local golf club. Why do people feel the need to drive a car that weighs three tons and needs a four-litre engine just to get it moving? I know that vehicles like that have their uses, and if I saw one in Africa hurtling down a dirt track laden with bags of grain and other such supplies, I’d heartily approve. But not for taking one small child to Tesco’s to buy a few bags of groceries. Bit of overkill, don’t you think?
I didn’t say anything to her. I bit my toungue and chowed down on my sandwich. The trolley didn’t do any damage, fortunately. The last thing I want is conflict, which generally makes me a bit of a pushover. I will fight for something I believe in, don’t get me wrong about that. But someone who drives a huge car and is not aware of the forces of gravity really isn’t worth wasting my breath on.