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Arkwright - The Independent Voice
I'm putting on my rose tinted glasses, forgetting the financial woes of the world, challenging trading conditions and grey skies to head off for the French Alps. Pretending all is right with the world shouldn't be too hard once I'm lying back on the hotel's sundeck with a glass of glüwein looking up at Mount Blanc. Sadly, actually being able to ski may be a little more testing.
It's some years since I've been on the piste, in the skiing sense, and despite raiding shop stock and lining my suitcase with a variety of knee, ankle and back supports I fear my joints may not allow me to reach my old Ski Sunday standards. Let's just hope I get over my vertigo problem otherwise I won't even be able to get on the ski lift. But before I head for the airport (and there's another problem because I have a fear of flying) there's just time for me to tell you about this month's irritations and initiatives.
First up has to be a father and son who bounded into the shop like a couple of spaniels on speed. "Hamish, Hamish, do look, a proper sports shop. Absolutely super! The type of sports shop grandpapa used to take me to when I was your age. Look they've got everything". Hamish-Hamish (we came to the conclusion it was double barrelled his father said it so much) was probably about six and happy to reflect all the enthusiasm his dad was displaying. Over the next twenty minutes I was glad to impart good humoured advice when asked, I felt sure this father could not leave empty handed, he was hyping the kid up so much and I was right; well only just. As he paid for an abdo guard and half price pair of junior cricket gloves, so not much profit there, he said, "I can't understand why there aren't more proper sports shops today, the one near us closed down". Saturday Boy stopped tidying the trainer display and vaulted across the shop, "We're not a museum mate, oooing and aaahing doesn't pay my wages. You have to use it or lose it so I think Hamish-Hamish needs a cricket bag and look, if you take the one with wheels he'll even fit inside as well as all his kit. Just don't zip it up beyond his neck or you might forget he's in there". Father was speechless so just handed over his credit card while Hamish-Hamish, aided and abetted by Saturday Boy, got into the cricket bag and then clearly thought it a great laugh to be wheeled out of the shop with only his head sticking out of the bag.
Now who's the little joker working in the warehouse at the hybrid Reedidas, or should it be adibok? In these times of cutbacks for all, across every overhead, I can only conclude that someone, a bit bitter at the centralising of the Reebok and adidas warehouses, has decided to go on a splurge of packaging and see how wasteful he or she can be. Yesterday I got a delivery split, unnecessarily, between two boxes with plenty of room to spare in both but as each box had a delivery note I assumed it was caused by a computer on auto pilot. Today two more boxes arrived, this time with only one delivery note for a total consignment of just three garments, all the same product and size so why were they split? Two were in the smaller box which could easily have accommodated more but no the third was on its own in a box measuring 80cm x 28cm x 35cm!! That's 78,400 cubic centimetres for one pair of dance pants, at that rate the packer can claim a fair proportion of the destruction of the planet as well as wasting their employer's money!
As sales of goggles are always buoyant (as are armbands we hope!) I imagined our local pool must be well attended but having been swimming regularly over the last month, in an effort to counter my lack of fitness for the ski trip, I've been surprised at how under-used the facility is; if there's more than six of us swimming at the same time I now consider it crowded. While this makes for a very pleasurable and relaxing swim it cannot make for commercial success, particularly as most of my fellow swimmers are likely to qualify for the newly introduced over-60s free swimming, but at least in this case us tax payers are subsidising something we can actually use rather than being robbed to pay for bankers' pensions.
Must be away now to finish my packing. If I overcome the vertigo problem and stiff joints I could be reporting on partaking in paragliding and other adrenalin-fuelled antics - hold a page for me Ed in next month's Outdoor section just in case...
