Mind dump, steam valve.

I've been watching Jupiter and Venus slowly part. It's weird to notice the sky change so much each night. How did I never notice that before?

---

I came home from work and put my bike in the shed. No sooner had I opened the door, a huge black bumblebee flew inside. Probably a queen that just woke up from hibernation. I tried to chase it out, but it was resolute in its efforts to land in a pile of old cobnut shells on the floor and crawl under the freezer. I found a stick and tried to remove it, but she seemed intent on remaining there whatever my efforts. I gave up and had to shut her in. Stupid bee.

---

A highlight on my day is first thing in the morning after leaving the house. The drive opens onto the road at the end of a humpback bridge, so the drive comes up the side of the bridge's slope very steeply. Already in first gear from the night before and still fully rested, I mount that inclination with the greatest of ease. It feels like a great big "fuck you" to gravity. Something of a boost, given that I live next to a stream and thus the entire journey is uphill. It is a lengthy reply: "fuck you too!"

---

Customers are irritating. But sometimes their mere existence is the most annoying thing about them. I'm usually doing some task or other sorting out the store (the managers often leave me to handle the entire place alone). So many people want gardening advice, and I got nothing. It's not just a garden centre, it's a garden centre in an agri-college, and I look like a student. An easy mistake. A common one. When I'm at the counter I am more able to help by looking stuff up on the Internet. I find useful stuff for them. Which they could have found themselves! They aren't all technophobic codgers.

Jesus, they get on my nerves after a while.

So I catalog stock, clean, tidy, rearrange products, water plants, and myriad other tasks, thoroughly infecting the wounds in my hands in the process. And then these customers show up and actually want to buy something! The fucking nerve. I'm busy! And then I'll have to serve them, tidy up their mess, replace the stock glarrarrgghh. Running a store would be so much easier if there were no customers interfering all the time. Who shows up five minutes before closing time to browse?

And there are those who don't have their money ready at the till. When I shop, I have it all out by the time I get to the counter. Often because I'm counting it to see if I have enough. At the other end of the scale are those who will stand there pleasantly and not even attempt to reach for their chosen payment option until I announce the total. Twice. And then they have to get the coins out of a little zip-up money bag, which is inside a wallet, inside a purse, inside another purse, inside a handbag, inside a rucksack, somehow inside another handbag, and probably left outside in the car anyway. These people have been standing idle in a queue for ten minutes. What's their excuse? The older their are the more likely they'll be that way, and I'm sorry to say that it seems to be mostly women. I actually hope now that it really is mostly women rather than a selective memory indicative of some horrible bias.

Normally it wouldn't get to me, but after a long day of this happening over and over inside a big greenhouse on a hot day, it starts to get to me. I have to remain completely pleasant and not let the inner chimp take over, or the snark. Somehow I manage. Yesterday a gentlemen rooted for change for a moment before handing over a large banknote, claiming that he doesn't "have bits." I bit my tongue before I asked "and what does your wife think of that?" and referred him to the college's sexual health counselor who I had just previously served.

Queues are another peculiarity. This might be a specifically British issue, but perhaps not. But there appears to be, in the people around me, an overwhelming desire to queue. There can be no one in line for ages, and then as soon someone shows up at the counter a line forms. I can dart off for fifteen seconds to blow my nose or take a leak, and on my return find a queue ten or twelve people long. What the hell?

And the spiders are waking up after winter. There are so many spiders in that shop. I don't mind spiders, but they make an awful mess with their silk and webs, and I have to clean it up. I had forgotten what they are like. Goddamn spiders.

Oh, and the phone calls. Everyone calls the shop looking for the college. Or looking for us, but asking questions that should be asked of the college. I'm forever referring them, but ours must be the only phone in the college that cannot transfer calls. It recently transpired that it is the policy of the college reception to transfer such calls to us in the first place! A classic case of the right hand not knowing that it is a pain in the ass.


Sigh. Not that I'm complaining. At least I have work.