Only 16 and Carrier Bags!!

I’m back!
Did you miss me?!
I know its been a while since my last post, been busy galumphing round the country going to weddings and generally working to much (more about my adventures at a later date). For now as I have a few minutes I’m gonna have a waffle…

Yesterday as usual I was spending my Sunday working in the cigarette kiosk and as happens from time to time a particularly young looking girl came to the counter and asked to buy some cigarettes. Performing my duties in the selling of age-restricted products (mainly in the wishing to avoid paying any big fines department) I asked for ID to verify she was indeed old enough to buy cigarettes. Out came her passport complete with amusing photo of her aged 12 and I checked her date of birth: November 1989.
“So that makes you sixteen,” I said, handing her back the passport and getting her cigarettes.
“I’m seventeen in two months” she replied indignantly.
“Yes, but still only sixteen” I added, highly amused by the incensed look she gave me.

Anyway I finished the transaction and I won’t bore you with any more of the fun times at Sainsbury’s. It did get me thinking though, about being a young adult and yearning to be accepted as a ‘grown up’. She was a classic case over dressed and with makeup applied in industrial quantities.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be a teenager again. All that angst!! All that worrying about being accepted as an adult and no longer being seen as ‘young’!!
I was talking with H the other day about how good it was to be in our thirties, and how nice it was to be past all that worrying and insecurity. These days I’m pretty happy with who I am and I don’t really care what other people think of me. True I’m not perfect, but nor is anyone else. And besides it gives us something to work on.

On a complete change of subject, I have to have a bit of a vent of my current source of annoyance. Unsurprisingly it is connected with Sainsbury’s, but as I spend too much of my life there that’s hardly surprising. Anyway my current source of annoyance is the carrier bag. I will admit upfront to being a total fascist on this subject. And I don’t care.

I think that there ought to be total ban on the giving away of free bags in shops. They are completely unnecessary and a waste of plastic. Years ago when people went shopping they took there own bags. And its only in this modern consumer driven world where people think they have a perfect right to everything they want right now, that they have reached a point where they are to bloody lazy to take a bag with them shopping and feel they have a divine right to be supplied with bags to take their shopping home in. once the bags have made it home they end up in the bin to much of the time, and then of course adding to our ludicrous landfill problems.
I will admit with having a problem with the modern worlds consuming in general, and the bag issue is just a part of this. It annoys me when people lamely stand there on the checkouts saying, “I should really reuse my bags but I keep forgetting them,” whilst double bagging their shopping because they don’t think the bags are strong enough (which they are, trust me, I know far to much about the strength of carrier bags!!). They seem to have no problem forgetting to come shopping so why can’t they remember to bring bags with them. And if they are worried about the strength of the bag why don’t they shell out the miniscule sum of 10p for a stronger reusable bag. Oh it makes my blood boil.

Anyway that’s enough for now, I’ve had a bit of mango stuck between my teeth for a while now and I’m off into the bathroom with an assortment of tools to get it out!!