We have a customer in the shop, I would say in his fifties and is as doolally as someone on the way out. He is one those people who always walks up to a till and says, “I know there is something else I need but I can’t think what.” On average I get at least twenty customers a day using this line in different variations.

One of the many items we sell in the shop are sandwiches which are placed in the fridge, top left hand corner. We receive them from three different companies: Spar and two independent sellers who also stock the shop with cakes. When the sandwiches pass their expiration date, we return them to get money back. I’ve never fully understood why they take returns as the independent sellers have told us that they just bin them after making a count but either way, we get money back on what we don’t sell.

Every time a sandwich goes out of date we bag it alongside others by the same company and keep it on the shelf in the stock room. Previously to this we used to bag them and put them up the very back of the shelf in the fridge. It made it easier to ensure that they were collecting the returns and they didn’t have to sit for several more days to a week before being picked up. Eventually we had to stop doing this though as customers would open up the bags and start pulling sandwiches out, come to the till and try to purchase them but we always refused the sale and told them why they were in the bag, which they all accepted. The intelligent customers took the hint that a tied bag hidden up the back of a fridge is not something they should be ripping open.

This old duffer thought differently. One weekend we bagged around four to five sandwiches from one of the independent companies and slid the bag to the back of the shelf, behind two rows of in date sandwiches. He saw this bag, one of those candy stripe bags, and decided to pull it out from the back of shelf, having to move several other sandwiches out of the way just to get his arm in never mind pull it out. After having a wee peak into the bag, through the tiny hole that was open from the knot we tied, he decided to come to the till. “Is this a multi-pack of sandwiches?” he asked as I and the woman I work with looked on kind of stunned that someone would think that. “No, that’s a bag of out of date ones that we’re returning” we replied. “Oh. Just the way it was sitting it looked like a multi-pack.”

Now I know you can get multi-packs of sandwiches, the three pack with different types on display in special packaging, but how many of you have ever seen a multi-pack of sandwiches, inside a bag tied with a double knot to prevent people opening it, forced up the back of a fridge, for sale in a store?

The most common form of ID I receive when I challenge these kids is verbal: “I’ve shown my ID before” or “Everyone in here knows me; I’m in here all of the time.”

I try not to laugh and take the piss out of the customer when they say this but I couldn’t help myself when this young female delinquent decided to have a go at me.

Female: This and ten Mayfair.
Me: ID.
Female: You fucking kidding me on.
Me: Yeah, I asked it for a joke.
Female: I’m here all the fucking time. They all know me.
Me: I don’t.
Female: That’s fucking shite. I’m never going to shop in here again.
Me: [Laughs] That’s fine.
Female: Don’t fucking laugh at me. Take the two quid for the butter and fuck off.
Me: [Laughs]
Female: Fucking quit laughing at me, you think this is funny?
Me: Hilarious and so does your pal over there.
Female: I’ll fucking see you.
Me: I can see you right now.
Female: Fuck off!

I put twenty pence in the till from my pocket and switched it over for the twenty pence in the till and it was earlier today I found it lying under some papers on my desk and I’m now wondering how much this coin could be worth. The undated 2008 twenty pence coin with the Royal Shield of arms is still selling for a few hundred pounds here and there and I’m wondering if I should chance my arm with this coin as I cannot find anything about it on the internet.

I actually like the coin which is dated 2001, mainly because the Tudor Rose is the only piece of it that is silver and while it remains legal tender and has a face value of twenty pence, I would be interested to find out if it has any additional value. Maybe I could bribe a collector or like an episode of CSI, they’ll kill me just to get their hands on it.

Every day a company called Mortons delivers fresh rolls to the shop and on weekends we get a larger order. Last Sunday (8th April) we received a larger order than our usual weekend amount. The rolls usually sell out within five to six hours and most people who come in the afternoon miss them so on this occasion we ordered more for the store and to also help out a customer who wanted to buy fifty soft rolls and fifty crispy rolls to feed everyone at a christening.

Usually we put six rolls in each bag, seal it over and put it on the shelf. This method does take a while as you’re constantly just going back and forth from the shelf but on this Sunday, as we had so many rolls, I stacked them up at the doorway leading to the stock room, out of the way of customers. Once my boss finished putting out the newspapers I grabbed the trolley and just stood at the doorway bagging the rolls and putting them in the trolley to make things go a lot faster.

A female customer, roughly in her late forties, had come in the store, grabbed her newspaper and then made her way up to where we put the rolls. At the time I had already bagged all of the soft rolls and was now dealing with the crispy rolls. As she saw I was stacking them up in the trolley she came up to me, looking me directly in the eye, and said, “I’ll take some of your load.” Without thinking I replied, “I’m sorry but you’d never get any of my load dear.”

She either didn’t get it or chose to ignore it while feeling very unattractive that a fat guy would reject her.

The dream started as I was walking home besides the ash football pitches in the Westwood, East Kilbride. After passing the pitches there is a Spar and a local newsagents and as I was walking past here I got a phone call with the caller ID reading “Tour Manager – Opeth – Dave Allen” – that is how I usually add the phone numbers of tour managers to my phone when I am going to interview a band – so I picked it up.

Me: “Hello.”
Dave Allen: “Hi Michael, its Dave Allen, Opeth’s tour manager.”
Me: “How are you doing?”
Dave Allen: “Great. Are you available tonight? I’m doing one of my stand-up shows in Glasgow and I was wondering if you would like to come do an interview with me and I’ll also give you two tickets to see the show.”
Me: “Sure, what time would you like me to be there?”
Dave Allen: “If you could be here to do the interview at 7pm then that would be lovely.”
Me: “I’ll give you a call when I’m there.”

I’m suddenly there at this theatre, it resembles the O2 Academy in Glasgow in shape but the décor is completely different. I’m not sure how I got into the venue but I walk down to the seating area on the main floor before going through a door on the left. As I go through the door I enter this massive hallway which resembles the O2 arena with the open space and food stalls.

There are lots of male celebrities walking around and for some reason Ryan Seacrest stops to talk to me like he knows me. During our conversation he mentions that he is sick of running from “all those girls” but I had no idea what he was talking about, I actually thought he was trying to rub it in that woman love him. Two minutes later this large pack of females, screaming their heads off, came running up the hallway and Ryan made his escape. I stood laughing as he ran from these girls but I suddenly noticed their eyes were on me. I started to back up before I heard one shout “he was talking to Ryan, he must be famous too!” I quickly turned left and started to run as fast as I could. It was busy up ahead and it looked difficult to get through so I quickly jumped into the male toilets while they were out of sight. As I ran through the door I almost crashed right into Rob Lowe and James Roday who were also hiding from the girls.

Me: “You both look like you’re hiding out in here.”
Rob: “Have you seen those girls? I’m afraid for my life.”
James: “We’ve been in here for about fifty minutes now.”
Me: “Well they are still on the loose. I made sure I was out of sight before I came in here.”
James: “It won’t help, they’ve peaked in once or twice before but we’ve managed to stay hidden. Soon they will just charge in because they can’t find us.”

James was right because outside we could hear one of the girls say “we need to find where they are hiding. Check the toilets first.”

I started to try open the window so we could escape but it was set to only open to a certain level as there was a big drop outside, big enough to mean certain death if you jumped. James was holding the door back with all of his power as Rob started to boot the hands that made it through the opening. This was starting to resemble a horror movie and we were fighting off a crowd of zombies. Eventually the crowd were too strong and they made it in. Rob and James were backing up slowly to me, begging me to open the window from this blood thirsty crowd. I managed to break the lock and open the window fully but by this time James was already being mauled. Rob could have got clear and out of the window but because there was nowhere to go outside apart from down, he stayed back and told me to save myself. The last thing I remember is climbing out of the window as I heard Rob screaming in pain.

I quickly switched back to the hallway so I must have either survived the fall or found something to climb down on as I could see the police taking the women away as two body bags were carried from the toilet.

I walked down the hallway to a changing room with “Dave Allen” on the printed piece of paper. I walked into the room but it was actually a smaller theatre and he was sat down the front. I was joined by my friend Scott at this point so I must have asked him to join me at the show and for whatever reason he just appeared now.

Me: “Hi Dave. Sorry I took so long, you wouldn’t believe what is going on up there.”
Dave: “I’ve heard some amount of noise but I just ignored it.”
Me: “This is my friend Scott, there’s nowhere else really to go so do you mind if he just waits around while we do the interview?”
Dave: “Not at all. In fact, I could use the two of you for something.”

Scott and I joined Dave at this table which kept changing into a piano and then back. Dave had been working on a script for a television show and wanted us to go through it with him to see how it sounded. He gave me and Scott a script and told us to pick parts. Scott was quick to pick the male part so I was stuck with the female role. We sat and did the script while Dave made notes. As we finished we spoke about the script and I did my interview with him before he handed us two tickets for the show.

Although I remember taking my seat for the show and commenting to Scott how nice it was for Dave to give us free tickets, the next thing I remember is the following day. I was just sitting around on the computer when Dave called me again.

Dave: “Hi Michael. Remember last night when I was talking about my show and I said there was going to be some charity type events involving celebrities?”
Me: “I do indeed. You were going to put on some football matches and some other things.”
Dave: “Yes, well I’ve already arranged one game for this evening and I was wondering if you would like to be involved.”
Me: “I’d love to be involved.”
Dave: “That’s great. We are playing up at Nerston on the seven-a-side pitches at 8pm.”
Me: “I’ll meet you there.”

I arrived at the match around 7pm to meet up with Dave, get ready and meet the celebrities I would be playing with. It turned out that we would be playing four-a-side on the seven-a-side pitches but we would have regular subs just walking onto the pitch, the only player remaining constant would be the captain. The team we were up against had members of Westlife and Boyzone while my team, who I found out I would be captaining, would consist of members of the WWE roster.

The first to eleven goals would be crowned the winners and within minutes we were down by five goals. Primo and Mason Ryan were shockingly bad and with Ryan coming from Cardiff, I had hoped football would have been in his blood and he would be one of those who could help me. I pulled three goals back before they hammered in another two and by this time I had already tried and tested the Uso brothers, Heath Slater and Daniel Bryan. I then threw Scotland, Ireland and England into the mix with Drew McIntyre, Sheamus and Wade Barrett and we pulled the game back to 8-8. Barrett and Sheamus took each other out when going for a ball against one of the guys from Westlife and I brought in Big Show and The Miz.

Westlife and Boyzone were terrified when the Big Show came out and they just moved out of his way when he ran towards them screaming. He and The Miz put us within one goal of winning but two cheap goals brought it to sudden death. The Big Show made an attempt for goal but was being pulled back so he never hit it hard enough towards the empty net. One of the Boyzone members struck a shot that looked sure to be going in but it clipped the bar and bounced up off the line. The Miz grabbed it and threw it towards the Big Show’s head as he knocked it on for me. I played a one-two with the wall to get around the first player, pulled off a rainbow flick to get past the second before catching the ball on the way down to volley it into the bottom corner. As we celebrated our win, Dave Allen put Opeth’s ‘The Devil’s Orchard’ played over the loud speakers.

Dave came over to congratulate us and told us that this match would be televised the following night and he would like my team to join him for the first broadcast.

As I sat with Dave, Kofi Kingston, Evan Bourne and John Cena, Big Show came up behind and grabbed me by the back of the neck, lifting me up off the ground just to celebrate last night’s win. After we watched the match together, the footage quickly changed to the changing room that Westlife and Boyzone had. They were moaning at each other because they lost to a group of wrestlers and just as things were becoming heated between them, buckets of gunge fell from the ceiling covering every one of them like it was an episode of “Get Your Own Back.”

I woke up after that.

I’m an Andrex Skin Kind guy myself, enriched with Aloe Vera and Vitamin E and a scented inner core, it is by far the softest and nicest toilet paper I have cleaned my backside with. Andrex Classic just doesn’t offer the same amount of pleasure. Andrex Skin Kind makes me feel like I have just used a cute little Labrador puppy whereas the normal rolls are more like a Great Dane, you either stroke it the right way or you’re not going to have a pleasurable experience.

Andrex Great Dane does have one advantage of the Labrador variation and it all comes down to the sheets. Andrex Skin Kind is treated with Aloe Vera, Vitamin E and all that to make it softer and it feels like they use thicker sheets when they place them together. Andrex Classic uses two untreated thin sheets together which dissolve under any real pressure.

Where is the advantage to using thin crappy sheets you ask? When flushing. Yes, we’ve all had that moment, likely when we’re ill or if you’re really packing a lot of ammo, when we really do a number on the toilet and we use more toilet roll then we would normally use. As you stand up and turn round to pull the lever or push the button to flush, you always think to yourself “I wonder if all that toilet roll will flush or will I block the toilet” but you attempt it anyway. If you’re an Andrex Skin Kind user then it is unlikely you will defeat the toilet and you will now have the fun of unblocking it but if you are a Classic user then you need not worry yourself with how much toilet roll your dirty ass requires. As soon as you pull that lever or push that button, no matter how much toilet roll you use, it will dissolve in front of your very eyes and you can just move on over to the sink to clean your hands.

If you like to stock up and drop enough bricks to build a high-rise then Andrex Classic is the way to go but if you wish to care for your backside and don’t mind the occasional two second unblocking of the toilet then Skin Kind should be the only toilet paper on your shopping list.

Today as always, the shutter went down at 3pm and we finished cashing up the main till, printing the reports from the PayPoint and lottery machine, pulling down the fridge covers, locking the back doors and making sure everything was sorted before we left. The television we use for the security cameras was the last thing I turned off at 3:05pm as we turned on the alarm. At this time I could see some guy using the cash machine outside the shop but with all of our shutters down, it was obvious to everyone that the store was shut. As we went outside he was still there and his 21st century intelligence came into play.

Idiot: Are ye shut?
Me: Yeah mate (duh!).
Idiot: Never known a fucking Paki’s to shut at this time.
Me: We’ve always shut at this time.
Idiot: I come fae Glesga and nae place shuts at this time. They aw shut at 10[pm].
Me: Well we always shut at 3[pm], as does the newsagents at the end of the row and many other local shops. The Centre (shopping centre) shuts between 3-5[pm] as well except Sainsburys.
Idiot: You need tae get wae the 21st century.
Me: I think you need to get a clue.
Idiot: Nae Paki shop in Glesga shuts at this time.
Me: That’s the city mate and it is far busier in there than it is here in this town. This is just a local shop and we’re not expecting crowds of people to be wandering past here at all hours of the day. I think people with a clue would realise that.
Idiot: Fucking joke mate.
Me: It’s not really, can’t think of anyone who would laugh at it. Go to the supermarket if you want anything. In the 21st century, all shops close early on a Sunday, not sure about your magical wonderland but here on earth that’s how it works.
Idiot: No place shuts before 10[pm]!
Me: That’s because they either sell booze and you’re allowed to sell it up to then or they are far busier than us because they are in the middle of the city, not in the middle of the street in a local area. Welcome to the 21st century.

We have a cash machine outside of our shop with a security camera which looks towards the machine side on. Every month we get a few people saying they forgot to lift their money and if we could check the cameras to see if anyone lifted it or if it may have been sucked back in. I think machines usually wait between 10-15 seconds before it takes the money back.

As most of my work days involve me standing behind a till and serving customers, I am starting to think there should be a set amount of time that a customer should make me stand there holding their change out like a dick before they take it.

Little old women are the worst. I had a female customer, in her mid-30s, who came into the shop just yesterday (Friday, 20th January 2012) and said “you men have the right thinking.” I was going to propose a number of topics for a joke but she wasn’t a regular, so I kept it clean. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Putting change in your pockets rather than a wallet, or in my case a purse. It takes too long to go through a bag for just a couple of coins for a [news]paper.” It’s not just the quickness and ease, in most cases, and it is always old women, they wait until everything is fully bagged and a queue is building up before they start rummaging through their silver collection, counting up their five pence coins for a bill of over eight quid. They know it is going to be over a certain amount so instead of being prepared they stare into space and wait until you inform them of the cost of their shopping. Then they will place their handbag down, rummage for their purse to then spend 10 seconds trying to remember which side has their coins and which side their notes (they always get it wrong and then joke about they’ve had the purse for years) and then start counting. At this point I have a queue of five or more people; every so often you see a head pop out from the line to look and see what the old duffer is doing. It could be made easier if I worked with people who helped me out (on Fridays I do but on Saturday and Sunday I’m better on my own, for your sake) but one of the guys I work with at the weekend is more useless than a feather in a gun fight. He constantly walks around staring at his ugly mug in the mirror, fixing his shaved hair and singing Pakistani songs. It’s always amusing when my boss, a Pakistani, is around as he hates it and you will often hear him shouting “if you don’t stop singing that Paki shite I’ll boot you in the nuts!”

It came to me on Friday, soon after speaking to that woman in her mid-30s, that maybe I should start taking money back. I stand there with my arm out, waiting, eternally waiting for this old duffer to sort herself out so she can finally take her change and I can give my arm a few seconds of a rest before I need to serve another customer. So I’m now proposing a 5-10 second rule on all of my customers. During those 5-10 seconds if you do not accept your change it will return to the till, that is of course, until you lodge a complaint with my manager and I then give you it back.

To highlight how effective/profitable this mentality would be, I put it to the test. For one hour in work today I started to count every time I was ready to drop the customers change in their hands. Over that hour, which included a sprint to the toilet for a pish, I had thirteen customers who made me wait five seconds or more before taking their change. I must add to this, all customers have seen my hands or have heard me say “here’s your change,” they know I am giving them their change but find a way to delay the process. Over that one hour period £36.81 was just left there, floating around for five seconds or more as the customer decided what planet they were on. I actually wrote down all the numbers on the back of my wage packet.

It will never become a thing that we all do, mainly because a bank will restore that money into your account while I will be pocketing it for either the shop or my own gain. I guess the problem actually comes down to the fact that I’m too fast on a till and then I just run into a brick wall that is a wee dotty old bat and the occasional guy who from on is known as buddy. Maybe I should force my boss into changing the layout of the till area so the bags are at the side of the customers and they have to pack their shopping themselves. Saves me the hassle and I’ll be happy to wait as you try split everything up for an even weight.

When I rented the game from LoveFilm I knew the initial story and ideas behind the game, including that it was built on the Frostbite 2 game engine. For those of you who don’t know the story you play as Jack Rourke, a twat who was involved with a criminal organisation and now owes them a large sum of money. Now on the run he teams up with Sam (voiced by the beautiful Christina Hendricks who also lent her likeness to the game) who enters him into a 3000 mile race from San Francisco to New York. Successfully overtaking 200 other opponents and coming in first will net them a tidy $25 million which will clear his debt (I think it’s around $2 million, can’t fully remember), fill Jack’s pockets with 10% of what’s left and the rest going in her piggy bank.

One of the features of the game is that you will, on a few occasions, be outside of the vehicle and you will have to out run police officers, mobsters and dodge certain other objects which will kill you in a second. As the game was built using Frostbite 2, the same engine used for Battlefield 3, I thought we would have some control over the character. I never thought for a second that it would become an open world environment and you had to escape by stealing a car Saints Row Bo-Duke style but I thought at least you would have some sort of control over the character and the environment to escape down a linear path. Open world, or at least semi-open would have made this even better if, for example, Sam gives you a location to a new car and now you’re given control of running and avoiding the angry mob chasing you down the streets and back alleys. Sadly the only control you have is by button mashing. It turns out that every time you are forced from your vehicle you are shoved into a quick time event that offers fuck all to the game. That’s what I get for assuming we’d get something unquie. So, yeah, that sucked.

The race, as I mentioned, is a 3000 mile race from San Francisco to New York, which to me meant many hours of driving across a beautifully Frostbite 2 rendered America but EA and Black Box said nah. An uninterrupted journey in real life, according to Google Maps, will take 47 hours and while I knew there was no chance of that in the game, I expected somewhere between the region of one sixth of that. My time for completion was two hours, seventeen minutes and thirty one seconds.

If you played Burnout Paradise then you will remember several of the races started in one corner of the map and then you had to race to the opposite corner of the map with the freedom to take whatever route you wanted. That’s how I had envisioned NFS: The Run to some degree. I expected that you would be given a start and a finish for each race over a large area and then it was up to you to finish first, in your own way, to move up the list of 200 drivers. Instead you are stuck in a group of short linear races with the odd challenge in between. You’re on the run from a criminal organisation so I don’t think this is exactly the time to be following diversion signs. You have the opportunity to win $25 million but see that road down there, I’m sorry to tell you but you can’t go down there. I know, I know, it will probably end up meaning you escape death and complete this race much quicker but don’t you worry, we’ll give you a linear challenge right after this race to make up the time you are behind your opponents because we let them take that road just there.

NFS: The Run feels like it could have done with a lot more planning. Instead of putting a lot of focus into the game, the way it plays and how far they are able push the boundaries with the amount of content, they restricted themselves to the limits of a short script. The problem is that the story doesn’t expand beyond the first twenty minutes of the game. There are no twists that come in along the way; you are given information regarding your characters past, what must be done to fix it and then it is just a case of winning. They could have easily dragged out portions of it to give us more gameplay or just kept expanding upon the dialogue and story as they saw fit but they stuck to a short linear storyline. This is the largest NFS game ever created, it has over 186 miles of track to drive on but why not go wild and throw in some more, there are another 2814 miles to play with. They didn’t have to make it completely open world like Burnout Paradise or like the incredibly huge Fuel (it takes longer to drive from one side of the map to the other in Fuel than it does to complete this game) but at least make the races longer and make it feel like you are actually fighting over a 3000 mile distance. Building a semi-open world and giving the user the choice of more routes to take and allowing them to take risks would have made this game more exciting. If you fail to win a race then you simply restart but why not put more pressure on the gamer by forcing them to then have to beat more people in the next race and make the game more challenging. Never at any point do you feel like you have to put in extra effort, just overtake your opponent and you will glide over that finish line with ease.

The AI is extremely boring and simple, they are easy to pass and stay ahead of. Black Box increase the difficulty by throwing in the police and the mob who attack you during your races. The police set up road blocks and try ram you off the road while the mob will ram you, shoot you and also send a helicopter with a machine gun out for you also. Sadly due to the fact that the races are short and sweet then it is easy to fend them off and win by a good five second or more margin per race. The police remind me of the defenders in Fifa. Even if your player is ten times faster and has ten times the stamina of the defender, he always catches you and the police in NFS: The Run are the exact same. Your high performance supercharged super duper supercar is doing over 200MPH but they will still continually catch up to you and remain on your bumper, even while you burn down a full nitrous meter, and attempt to run you into a road block which is set up ahead. The AI appears to have diplomatic immunity I might add; must get one of those bumper stickers.

NFS: The Run isn’t a bad game; I did enjoy what I played but I would think that anyone who purchases this game will feel cheated that this is all you are given. The graphics are stunning and the cars feel fast. Handling can be tough at times as the game engine compares the type of car you are driving and the type of road you are on at the time so you must adjust to the weather and environment. Once you pick a car you are stuck with it until you find a petrol station to pull into and change over to something which fits the road you’re driving on and these stations are rare and easy to miss. During the car selection process you will be given information regarding the cars handling so it will help in your decision. The challenge series looks like it would add another hour or two to the game but by the time you finish the main story the last thing you want to play are those challenges over and over again. There may be a selection of new challenges but I didn’t fully investigate as I rented this game hoping for it to be so much different than it turned out to be and I was finished with it once I completed the last race. As I rented I wasn’t given an online pass and I sure as hell wasn’t purchasing one. Multiplayer is multiplayer, you race against people in different playlists (playlists are just different types of divisions for cars such as muscle, sports etc), finish, repeat and imagine what twisted ways you would kill that twelve year old American kid who calls you a pussy and questions your granny style driving skills over the mic.

I think Criterion Games will and should be given full control of the NFS license. What I played of NFS: Hot Pursuit was great and the Burnout series is one of the most fun and enjoyable racing experiences you will find on any gaming system – I suppose that does come to the fact your aim is to take other people out so it doesn’t qualify as much as I would like it to.

Very short, finished far too quickly and just not satisfying in any shape or form, the Bucky Larson edition of Need For Speed: The Run.

Rating – 6