Some Non-Events
I have had a very busy few days but in a slightly paradoxical way I have a few blogworthy non-events to share with you.
Let’s start with the opening of the apparently ‘new’ Superdrug store in Oxford. Superdrug is a convenient place to stock up on the essentials such as toothpaste and I needed to pay a visit last Friday (bear with me, this story does have a point). It normally opens fairly early but at 9.10am there were some people waiting outside and the doors were shut. Looking past the sign which gave the opening hours as 8.30 am onwards I noticed that the staff were all stood round inside and there was a banner across the doorway. One of the others waiting outside pointed out the poster advertising the ‘New Look’ store which opened on Friday with 10% off everything. I’m glad the posters were there because otherwise there was nothing to suggest the store was in any way ‘new’. After a minute or two a member of staff popped out to tell the assembled group that “the shop will open in 5 minutes or so – I promise this time” and then went back to her social circle. Well, I didn’t have time for this, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else. We all crossed the road to Boots.
Then there was the BBC headline “non-celebrity wins celebrity big brother”. Wow. Big deal. I didn’t see any of the show, but I feel the fact that it was won by a ‘non-celebrity’ says it all. Though from what I can tell the entrants were all ‘non-celebrities’ anyway. But I digress. Whilst I was in Leeds visiting Sam (which was great) we saw a local paper billboard at the station which proclaimed something like “Leeds girl’s Big Brother success”. My assumption was that the winning ‘non-celebrity’ came from Leeds. I don’t know how I resisted the urge to buy a copy. Then we went to York (which was also great) and there we saw a local paper billboard proclaiming “York girl’s Big Brother success”. Great. So some bimbo – who I now presumed came from somewhere between York and Leeds – shoots to ‘fame’ by ‘winning’ a ‘show’ which no-one watched anyway and suddenly it’s the most newsworthy item within some radius of her home town. However, if The Metro I picked up on the train this morning can be believed the aforementioned bimbo comes from Essex . So what’s with the Yorkshire local papers? One might even get the impression that even my new home town of Billingshurst is more exciting than Yorkshire ’s flagship cities – the local headline over Christmas was “Billingshurst Firefighters tackle shed blaze”.
Let’s start with the opening of the apparently ‘new’ Superdrug store in Oxford. Superdrug is a convenient place to stock up on the essentials such as toothpaste and I needed to pay a visit last Friday (bear with me, this story does have a point). It normally opens fairly early but at 9.10am there were some people waiting outside and the doors were shut. Looking past the sign which gave the opening hours as 8.30 am onwards I noticed that the staff were all stood round inside and there was a banner across the doorway. One of the others waiting outside pointed out the poster advertising the ‘New Look’ store which opened on Friday with 10% off everything. I’m glad the posters were there because otherwise there was nothing to suggest the store was in any way ‘new’. After a minute or two a member of staff popped out to tell the assembled group that “the shop will open in 5 minutes or so – I promise this time” and then went back to her social circle. Well, I didn’t have time for this, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else. We all crossed the road to Boots.
Then there was the BBC headline “non-celebrity wins celebrity big brother”. Wow. Big deal. I didn’t see any of the show, but I feel the fact that it was won by a ‘non-celebrity’ says it all. Though from what I can tell the entrants were all ‘non-celebrities’ anyway. But I digress. Whilst I was in Leeds visiting Sam (which was great) we saw a local paper billboard at the station which proclaimed something like “Leeds girl’s Big Brother success”. My assumption was that the winning ‘non-celebrity’ came from Leeds. I don’t know how I resisted the urge to buy a copy. Then we went to York (which was also great) and there we saw a local paper billboard proclaiming “York girl’s Big Brother success”. Great. So some bimbo – who I now presumed came from somewhere between York and Leeds – shoots to ‘fame’ by ‘winning’ a ‘show’ which no-one watched anyway and suddenly it’s the most newsworthy item within some radius of her home town. However, if The Metro I picked up on the train this morning can be believed the aforementioned bimbo comes from Essex . So what’s with the Yorkshire local papers? One might even get the impression that even my new home town of Billingshurst is more exciting than Yorkshire ’s flagship cities – the local headline over Christmas was “Billingshurst Firefighters tackle shed blaze”.
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