Thinking of a title before you've written anything is tricky

If you're of a foreign disposition, and don't happen to live under the regal wing of the UK monarchy, I'll let you in on a secret.

It's snowing in Britain.

If this is a hard concept, I have a diagram below which I prepared over several seconds.

Despite this having happened for the last several years, despite everyone in the country expecting it, and despite having had rather a  long time to prepare for it, the entire infrastructure of the country has done what it does best and totally imploded in a grid-locked mess of complacency and piss-poor planning. To be fair, there are the odd roads dotted around which don't require skidoos to navigate, and some of the trains are even arriving at stations (some within a day of their timetabled slot) but realistically any form of long-distance travel has now become fraught with frustration to the point where the word 'cancelled' loses all meaning. Even isolated as I am in a bubble containing Southampton University and the surrounding 3 miles, the effects are being felt as lectures are cancelled and bored students are prone to spontaneously bursting into snowball fights.

If you're expecting the usual slew of dry derision I'm afraid I'll be disappointing you on this front. Basically this is because since we were foetuses human beings have had a primal urge to go and roll around in snow, throw it at each other, build things, and generally act about half your actual age. And why shouldn't we? As long as we're tolerating not being able to achieve anything productive beyond churning out the occasional blag post, we may as well have the option open to put on 12 layers of clothes and prat around outside until our limbs fall off.

And of course, it's also fine that year-on-year the travel companies, airport operators, and particularly Network Rail remain strangely clueless to the impending cold spell until it comes crashing down on their hollow little heads like an avalanche of..... snow... I guess. New motto suggestion for them: "Because it never happens here!"®

Some things we also learned these last few weeks: in what scientists are calling a "meh" announcement, Prince Will and some other person are to be happily wed. Awww. For most of the country I think this comes as some slightly happy news. For the press, it's apparently more important than the moon exploding or life being found in Cliff Richard's undergarments, because they literally cannot stop talking about it. The Times for example, had a lovingly puke-worthy column by someone called Carol, who complained that she's 'already sick of hearing about it', which was of course followed by six articles in the paper's features section devoted to the happy couple. The Telegraph were similarly eager to lampshade their own relentless pursuit of the engagement, with another derisive column and a cartoon lampooning the press coverage, all nestled deep within 16 full pages, and 3 part-pages of stories about Will and Kate. Either these publications have suddenly found the ability to poke fun at themselves (and Hell will soon be ordering out for some heaters to melt all the ice) or their editors should probably be sent back to Kindergarten and re-taught how to read.

One more mention which I have to make to a beautifully constructed piece of commentary (19 Oct this year) from that 'newspaper' the Daily Mirror: "Others have made a small industry out of wrongly predicting the nuptials- we chose to got our facts right. Their formal engagement will be announced in early 2011". Isn't hindsight wonderful?

Also in the news: North Korea are Murderers, Sarah Palin: Still a Retard, Students in Britain Actually Protest with Good Cause, and Latin-American Twatsalad Finally Leaves X-Factor.

All in all, a good few weeks, despite the bruises and aches caused by mucking around in snow. Once it's all melted I'd like to place an advanced order to have Spring implemented two months early.

Merry Snowmas

-Neopbbbrrrrrrrrrr

Thank You For Cashiers

Despite my highly persistent spate of good-moods recently, I find myself frequently let down by a few instances of humankind doing what they do best: behaving like a pack of semi-intelligent mammals with little more basic sentience than a desire for some form of sustenance. I'm probably being a little harsh in out-and-out lambasting in this manner: maybe it's because I'm tired and should be sleeping instead of typing away here.

In fairness then, what I've really noticed recently is a few minor niggles, and a few oddities which society seems to carry proudly, like a garish pink tie.

One particularly fantastic example of civilisation going utterly strange, is the traits observed in a shop. In my case, the Union shop on campus. Like most shops, it consists of things to buy, and people to buy them from, many of whom can even spell their name unaided. This fascinating crucible of abnormality is so typical in its unusuallness, as to make it almost imperceptible to patrons frequenting the premises- except for those who occasionally feel the slight pang of realisation that something about a shop, changes people.

Take for example, walking [v. Moving at a regular and slow pace, by lifting and setting down each foot in turn]. This specifically applies to our campus shop because it's not the largest of establishments. Think convienience store with more hangovers.

Most of us have long mastered the art of alternating lower limb placement in order to translate yourself spatially to your desired destination. It's about the first thing your parents actually try to get you to achieve once you've stopped dribbling your food all over yourself. But step into a shop and for some reason all prior knowledge of bipedal motion is briskly tossed aside. Confine people in a crowded store and not only will Joe McNormalguy start walking uncomfortably close to the man in front (who's curious, but just not into him), he'll start taking tiny, tiny little baby steps that in any other situation would not only look totally stupid, but probably offend anyone with rheumatism. Don't know what I mean? Wait until you're next in a queue or a crowded shop, trying to force your way to the sandwiches, and take a look at your feet. I guarantee you'll be shuffling along like a geriatric cripple on his way to his own funeral. This probably stems from the same mentality that causes people to drive in short bursts during heavy traffic, rather than cruise at a decent speed: we need to KEEP MOVING. "If I wait, until I can take a proper step, that polite old lady will LEAP into my allocated floorspace like the thieving bint that she is and steal my spot. I'd best shuffle slowly into it, to keep it mine."

Language takes an interesting turn as well. Scientists have proven (without any shadow of a doubt, or emails of a doubt [hooray for current affairs humour, and for double paranthesis!]), in over 104% of cases, people say 90% of their sorrys and thank yous inside a shop, on any given day.

Let's briefly consider the situations where you'd apologise in say, the act of sitting in... the cinema. For example. It'd probably include, apologising for making noise (eg. coughing), for getting up, or for.... well that probably depends on what else you do in a cinema.

Now think of all the reasons you might sounds apologetic in a store. Got a few? I think typically, you'd expect some sort of remorseful acknowledgment in any or all of the following situations:

• Someone blocking your view of the shelves
• Someone bumping into you
• Someone bumping into something attached to you, eg. Bag, basket, spouse
• Someone taking the last snickers bar from under your nose.... the git...
• Someone almost bumping into you
• Someone at the checkout fumbling your change
• YOU fumbling your change
• The person in front of you fumbling their change, thus holding you up.
• Someone stepping on/running over your shoe/bag/son

This list is long, tedious, and incomplete (like our government). Take the world's most hardened, angry BNP supporting racist and throw them in a shop with three dozen asians and he'll be grovelling away as soon as he looks them in the face and maybe nearly slightly nudged their shopping.

I don't understand this. For a country proud of it's identity as a whiny, stuck-up population of blue-blooded patriots we don't half crumble when we're at the grocers.

"Thank you"s come in droves too. Most of these occur at the checkout. In the process of paying, people say thank you an obscene amount of times. Get given a bag? Thank you. That's fine. Small talk? Always finish it with thank you. It's polite. Cashier gives you your stuff? Thank you for my stuff. You hand your money over: thank you. They hand you your change, thank you for my change, and thank YOU for thanking me for your change, and as you leave, they thank you again (for leaving, presumably, so that they can continue thanking the next person in line).

I always find it hard to honestly thank people in shops more than twice. It begins to lose meaning after that. Besides, why would I thank someone who thinks the best way of dealing out change is to make a neat little bloody tower of it, with the note at the bottom, and dump it into my palm? Thanks. That's awesome. I'll use my third hand to awkwardly try and pick the coins off the fiver and stuff them into my wallet, which is in my second hand underneath my shopping, then grabbing the fiver from my third hand with my second hand with the wallet in it before putting the wallet back into my first hand which is now mysteriously empty of any shopping and sliding the note into the middle, cunningly tipping my change all over the floor, dropping my milk, and annoying the cashier: who says "Thank you" angrily. All this takes place in under one second- because if you take longer than this, you'll find that the next shopee has parked themselves on top of you, with all their shopping, because the cashier has noisily barked the beautifully obscure question of "can I help you?" to the next in line. "Yes. Yes you can help me. You can quietly, without question, scan my items, tell me how much I owe, thank me ONCE, give me my change COINS FIRST, then give me some tiny amount of time to sort my life out so I can get out of your way for the next person, instead of feeling like I'm in some currency-fuelled time trial to piss off out of the doors in the least possible time, but without ACTUALLY committing theft."

In summary, shops are like black holes for social norms. Give it a few years and they'll be thin veneers for fetish clubs, underground political movements, and people who like The Cheeky Girls.

What do you mean, cynical?

I think maybe I shouldn't read so deeply into things.

-Neop