Strange and Disconcerting Meeting

I have been out as usual with Alfie at around 7a.m. We walked along Strudwick Drive and crossed Oldbrook Boulevard, wandered along the path and then back. As I was crossing the road, which at this stage is in two parts, with a reservation in the centre (this is an attempt I imagine to slow the traffic.) I heard a female voice come out of nowhere, 'Can you lend me £1.50?.' I can't say that I'm easily scared, but to have such a voice come out of the dark is quite scary. It was the woman I have mentioned in an earlier post on here, whom I have encountered twice, asking for money from people she meets. It is quite concerning. I don't usually carry cash with me when I'm walking Alfie. I don't know whether she gets any money from the other people she meets. Is this a form of begging? What is her mental state? She appears well dressed, she doesn't look as if she's in any distress, no sign of blood or injury of any kind. I walked back home and immediately rang 999 but then was told to ring 101 and I gave details of this woman to the police as she needs reporting, more for her safety and perhaps more for the fact that she might come from a home somewhere and whoever looks after her needs to know where she is.

My friend Nick has been to visit from Northampton. H'e actually been staying with his mother in Bedford. He texted to say he was arriving on the bus at 11.45, so I drove into the centre of Milton Keynes. It was difficult to find a parking space in the usual car park, but with a bit of patience I found a place, paid for a ticket (the first machine I went to wouldn't take the two 50p coins I put in, for whatever reason. I went into the shopping centre and sat outside Starbucks, which was where we were meeting. The whole place gone crazy, shoppers taking over, it's as if the shops were going to be stripped entirely of their contents by a swarm of locusts. We didn't go into Starbucks as the queue at the counter virtually came out of the door, so we walked along to Costa opposite Marks and Spencer. We had special Christmas drinks, Irish coffee velvet cream latte. Very nice and I'd definitely have again, but I think they're only on the menu over the festive period. Also had cheese and ham toastie (I have these a lot, as you will have realised, if you read my blog posts on a regular basis.)and finally, a slice of rocky road cake. Then, we went into Marks and Spencer's. Nick said he wanted to buy a hat. We went up the escalator to the men's department and we found an array of different hats, ranging from Trilby-style to cloth and eventually wolley hats, one of which Nick chose and we went to pay. Quite a long queue at the till. People going crazy no doubt buying Christmas presents.

We walked along the shopping centre. We went into an opticians as Nick wanted to look at prescription sunglasses. My glasses have Transition lenses in them, which means they go black when I go into bright sunlight, but then return to clear when indoors or it's not sunny. Nick looked at a rather stylish pair of glasses which looked more like sky goggles, with wrap-around lenses which were reflective and with a yellow trim. He wanted to have prescription lenses in them and when he asked the assistant for the price, we were somewhat shocked by the more-than £400 price tag, so they went back in the unit.

We drove back to my flat, as Nick was interested to see where I was now living. He got to meet Alfie and then took him out for a walk around Oldbrook Green.

As regards the strange woman who was asking for money, I have not seen her since I reported her to the Police. I just hope that she is now back home, safe and being cared for.

More Confusion Over Surgery

(Saturday) I took Alfie out at around 7.45 this morning. It was quite overcast and there was a damp feeling in the air. It was definitely attempting to rain, but not quite making it. As we got to the grassy area where I let him off his lead, I opened my mobile to text Carol and she'd sent me a text to say she had been told late last night that she was going for surgery in the morning and she couldn't eat anything, 'nil by mouth,' as they say. I was a bit confused, as you can imagine, because yesterday we were told that there was no abscess and that surgery wasn't required to drain it. So, what has changed since? I got home and rang the ward to be told that they were waiting to hear from the surgery team what the situation was. At that time there was no idea of when or even if the operation was going ahead and they now have my mobile number to call me when they have news. There is no point me going in to the ward if Carol isn't there and I've now spoken to her and even she's as confused about the turn of events. So I'll wait until the ward calls me before venturing in, probably at lunch time.

Later. Been texting Carol. It's now gone 11 o'clock and we're no clearer as to whether she's going to theatre or not. Just seems a really confusing time. I want to go to Waitrose but I can't really leave the house until I know exactly what's going on.

Later still. Carol texted me again and the surgery isn't happening. Why are we in this situation? It's the same as yesterday. I decided to drive to Waitrose as planned. I bought some ready individual meals (or individual ready meals. Which is it? I don't know. Which sounds better?) It was raining quite hard as I drove into their carpark. Coming down the slope into the carpark near Metro Bank, you have to be careful how you negotiate the rather difficult turn at the bottom as they've put a sort of yellow sign in the way and if you weren't careful you'd hit it. I think all this is intended to put of anyone who has thoughts of ram-raiding the Metro Bank, which has happened in the past. I don't suppose anyone thought that they have made things easy for those of a criminal mind, because at night nobody would see what was going on near the bank branch or even any of the retail outlets near Waitrose because you can't see anything from Chaffron Way, which is fairly high up on a sort of embankment, unless you happened to live in one of the flats or the houses which are adjacent to the Waitrose carpark.

After I purchased my bits and pieces and stowed them in the car, I returned to avail myself of the café within Waitrose. You used to get your drink free if you ordered food, but apparently no longer. It took the woman in the queue in front of me a long time to decide what she wanted to eat and drink. Why is it some people are so indecisive? I took a  cheese and ham toastie off the display to have heated and also selected a rather nice-looking cake from the display as well as ordered a latte. It seemed to take a long time for my toast to appear, toasted. How long should it take? How long is a piece of string? I drank most of my latte and the cherry slice sat on it's plate, enticingly. But I wasn't eating it until I'd eaten the toasty. The waitress who delivered food to customer's tables came and went, delivering food to several seated customers. But not mine. How much longer was it going to take? It did arrive eventually and it was worth waiting for and so was the cherry slice. 

Even More Irritations of Life

Why do supermarkets have to keep moving their stock around their stores? I don't mean by putting it in trolleys and shifting it manually. I mean, when you, as a customer, get used to finding a particular product in the same place week after week, and then, for no accountable reason, they move it to entirely different aisle and shelf. This usually happens before Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, Mothering Sunday or any of the other 'festivals' or 'holidays' throughout the year. They seem to think it's fine to fill the shelves with stuff you can perfectly well do without, such as mince pies, Christmas puddings, crackers and so on, and whatever product you wanted is suddenly shifted to a remote corner without any warning.

Poor customer service is another irritation I can't stand. When I was at Milton Keynes hospital on Sunday I went to the branch of Costa they have in the newly refurbished entrance foyer (if that's the right term. I know hotels and theatres have foyers, so what is the entrance of a hospital called? Is there a correct word? Probably is, but I'm not sure what it is.) The queue was coming out of the door and into the corridor. I had to wait about 20 minutes before I could get served. A woman in front was fiddling with her mobile phone. What is it with people? Why is everyone so hooked on their mobile phones? Constantly peering at the little screens, looking at Facebook or Twitter, checking to see if someone has contacted them. Anyway, by the time I got to the till I had almost lost the will to live. I had taken a panini out of the display cabinet at the beginning of the queue and handed it to the girl at the till and paid for that as well as two drinks, I think they were lattes, but I forget now. Anyway, the girl I handed the panini to was going to heat it for me. Is that a microwave that heats the food or is it some other sort of oven? Whatever it was it did it's job efficiently and quickly. I had said I wanted to take the food away with me, but the girl put it on a plate. She had such a look on her face, it was as if I'd made some rude suggestion to her. More likely she didn't want to be working there, and particularly not on a Sunday. It wasn't so much the scowl on her face, but the fact that she hadn't listened to me when I'd said I wanted to take away the food I had ordered. THAT was the irritating part of this whole incident. She had such a look on her face, as I say, no doubt because she had drawn the short straw of having to work her shift on a Sunday. And who can blame her? Just didn't make for a very pleasant customer experience as far as I was concerned. Anyway, she made some sort of effort to place the two pieces of panini she had cut so nicely on a chopping board into a cleverly-designed cardboard container and handed it to me and I was able to walk back to the ward and devour the food and share the lattes with Carol. Just another of life's little irritations, when things should be better but aren't. Staff in such places can make all the difference to your experience, particularly at the checkout in the supermarket. If they scowl at you, as that young lady did in Costa, it can be a rather negative experience and put you off shopping there at a later date.