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The Independent Voice
There are times when I think customers divulge far too much information, and at other times they completely mislead you. I began to feel a little awkward when a chap came into the shop and launched into a story about how his wife just couldn’t get the hang of it. “I’ve told her,” he said, “If you can’t grip it, give it a good tug, then relax, you’ll never enjoy it nor be any good at it”.
While my mind was thinking, ‘please don’t tell me anymore’, my lips remained closed. “So that’s why I’m here, I need something to help her,” he continued, before pausing. Then he added “Grippo! I think that should do the job”. I didn’t flinch but wondered what this poor woman had to put up with at home when he barked the orders. “Would that be a tube or pot?” I enquired calmly. “Let’s start with a tube. If it works for her I’ll tell the rest of the bell ringers”. Now why couldn’t he have explained that at the beginning? Campanology, the next Olympic sport, perhaps?
Virtual friends
It’s amazing how one’s popularity increases with a website. If this attention translated into my sales figures increasing I wouldn’t have a problem, but unfortunately the attention comes from other ‘businesses’ with offers of what they claim they can do for me and that, generously, they’ll only charge a small fee. The number of times I’ve been offered ways of enhancing and optimising my rating - if they could all deliver on their proposals I would probably exceed the top of the Google tree and be propelled into cyber stardom.
Snookered
I am glad to see snooker is set to reinvent itself with the help of Barry Hearn, but it can’t just be a spectator sport. If people are going to be encouraged to watch snooker, they need to be able to play the game too. Where can young ones, if they do follow the sport, go to emulate their heroes? Tables are often in licensed premises from which youngsters are banned, and old-style youth clubs are practically extinct, having given up the fight to meet the plethora of rules and regulations that bind their premises and their volunteers.
Tobacco may once have been glamorous but it is no longer an acceptable sponsor, so it has been replaced by a brand of pies. What’s more, you can win your body weight in them; what an image! How long will it be until Jamie Oliver objects?
