The bags under my eyes have bags, fuck that, they have suitcases; the kind that expand.

What possessed me to work those ungodly hours I don’t know. Perhaps it was my childhood desire to be locked in a shopping centre over night that did it, or maybe it was my love of Dead Rising – you know, the zombie computer game.

Because walking through a deserted shopping centre resembling one of the living dead, and I’m pretty much there.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t healthy. Seven, sometimes eight o’clock in the morning I’d trudge home through the snow, exhausted beyond measure. Occasionally I’d catch my housemate leaving for work just as I was getting home.

Sometimes I had the sense to pop a vitamin C tablet in my mouth before collapsing into bed and sleeping until mid afternoon, only to then repeat the process a couple of hours later.

Or at least that was the plan.

About two hours every morning after going to sleep, I was awoken by the loud, obnoxious voice of my housemate downstairs, shouting on the phone.

Only he wasn’t shouting – his voice was just unnaturally loud and unnaturally fucking irritating. Me, who can sleep through a smoke alarm, me, who can sleep through a window banging shut in the room, me who can sleep through an earthquake – was awoken by THAT fucking voice.

Well that did it.

The following morning found me at my local 24 hour supermarket wandering around the store in a state of, well, just a state. I was in search of a particular item which would enable me to sleep in peace and quiet.

Don’t worry, I passed the DIY section by; although the jackhammer looked like it might do the trick, I was opting for a cheaper, and less messy solution.

I went to buy some ear plugs.

At seven in the morning, just after finishing a twelve hour shift on little sleep, I swear to you in that moment of delirium, to me, ear plugs were to be found down the baby aisle.

Well where else would they be? Who else would need them except exhausted, tired mothers?

Unfortunately I never did find the ear plugs down there, but I did happen to notice a supposed teething ring which looked suspiciously like anal beads.

My only hope is that the parents remembered to wash the beads thoroughly first before allowing their child to put it in their mouth.

Anyway, I eventually located the ear plugs down the makeup aisle and rushed home to try them out.

And when I say rushed, I mean that I managed to drag my feet enough times through the snow to get me home.

They worked a treat (the ear plugs, not my feet.) It was the best day’s sleep I’ve ever had. In fact, the best sleep ever. Trouble is, not only did they block out the obnoxious voice, they also blocked out the sound of my alarm going off…

Still, at least I didn’t feel tired as I was late getting into work.

This is called Point of Sale selling, whereby using my metaphoric charms, I talk a customer into buying an item which is on offer, or relates to a product they’re already buying.

You might know this as being hassled at the till when all you want to do is pay for your goods and leave the shop as quickly as possible.

Trust me, I hate asking “Would you be interested in…” just as much as you hate hearing it.

Unfortunately, this is something I have to ask. And if I have to ask, I may as well have some fun with it.

Thankfully where I work at the moment the goods I’m offering are at least relevant to our customer base (unlike my last job where I was made to sell nail varnish in a bookshop (amongst other things).) It makes it easier when sweet talking people into handing over their cash, because if I feel better about the products I’m trying to hock you, then I can usually sell more of them.

The current flavour of the month is selling a loyalty card to our customers.

Yes, you heard that right: selling a loyalty card to our customers.

I learnt very quickly not to refer to the card as a “Loyalty Card” as the customers are quick to point out that they shouldn’t be expected to “pay” for their loyalty. Ok, point taken.

So I now refer to it as a “Reward Card.”

A Reward Card is just a nicer way of saying Loyalty Card, except now the customer feels like they are getting something back for their troubles (and money.)

And I can’t just ask them outright if they’d like one because as soon as they hear the words “Would you like…” their brain screams at them, NO! Already they’re thinking, what’s the catch? How much is this going to cost me? Fuck off.

So instead I ask them if they already have one. It’s a win-win situation for me because if they already have one, then great, I can just swipe the card through the till and add their points on to it. And if they say no, then I can say: OH?! You don’t? But you must! Everyone has one. Even me (I don’t.) Would you like one?

And then they’re like: I must? You’re right, I MUST!

So I get out the little booklet and I tell them how many points they get per pound and all the sorts of things they can buy with their points. And by the end of it I’ve even convinced myself I should get one.

Then I unfold the last piece of the booklet and they notice the form. Uh oh. Deal breaker.

“Do I have to fill that in now?” they ask.

I’m not exactly sure what goes through their mind at this point, but whatever it is, each and every one of them all wear the same facial expression; like they’re running the last leg of a marathon and are desperate for a shit, or something.

Thankfully, I come to their aid like a sheet of Andrex.

Double ply.

“No. You can register online if you’d like.” Problem solved. No faffing around with a pen at the counter. No sir, not here. Not on my patch.

They smile, I smile – if the card had a mouth, I’m sure it’d be smiling too.

“Right then,” I tell them, “I’ll just set up your card now by swiping it through the machine. It-costs-three-pounds-but-goes-straight-onto-your-card-as-points, do you need a bag?”

I talk like one of those disclaimer voiceovers: BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED, TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY, YOU MUST BE 16 YEARS OR OVER; DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT £200.

Oh wait, the last bit’s Monopoly.

I watch as they withdraw from me faster than a direct debit on payday. I almost had them, I swear.

“Sorry, I don’t shop in here enough,” is one of the typical responses I hear.

LIAR, I scream. I saw you in here last week, and the week before.

“I already have one,” is another.

Then where is it?! Why is it not with your 100 other reward cards I just saw in your purse?

But the absolute best response I’ve ever had was:

“I’m not regular enough.”

What have your bowel movements got to do with me selling you a piece of plastic?!

On second thoughts, I don’t want to know.

NEXT!

You might also be able to guess my new place of work from the t-shirt I’m wearing.

Talking of work, since leaving the airport I’ve had a very different client base to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still the general public but they’re a different sort of breed on the high street.

Things like:

Remember to take the rubbish out.

And

Remove hair from plughole.

If that doesn’t want to get me out of bed in the morning, then nothing will.

Perhaps that’s why I’m currently writing this in bed…

Anyway, looking back over my “Plan B” (thank God I took a photo of it, as it’s nothing but a stain on the cloth that I wipe the board with now) I’ve come to realise I’ve actually accomplished a lot of what I set out to do.

Find a new job, do not act like a twat in interview – get said job.

Well, I did that, didn’t I? I got a new job. And they said I interviewed well, which means I managed to suppress the inner twat… oh the jokes I could make right now…

And for those that asked, yes it’s still in retail but at least I no longer feel the urge to suffocate myself (or more often than not, my customers) with those 1p bags…

Save lots of money from new job.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet got paid but I am saving money, or rather I am making money by selling a load of dust covered crap electronic products I own but no longer use.

Put moolah towards new flat.

This hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to happen any time soon due to something else on my horizon. And no, I don’t mean the sun shining out of my arse.

Complete Jessica novel.

I can’t really say I’ve completed it yet, but I have OPENED it again and started editing. It’s a start. And by editing I mean I corrected a typo.

Travel baby – Hounslow hightstreet doesn’t count.

Now this is on my horizon. Early next year will see me jetting off to Morocco to rough it out in the Sahara Desert. And by roughing it out I mean getting a nice exfoliating scrub from all the sand flying around…

Last Saturday also saw me and the lovely Em (in my exact words) “Getting cultured and shit” in the Museum of London, in wait for it… London.

Still, it beats Hounslow high street and we did get a good old wave from the Marines who were parading around the streets that day in all their uniformed glory. Swoon. I know what I want for Christmas.

Find a suitable location on body for tattoo.

That’s been thought of, which wasn’t that hard once I figured out what exactly it was I wanted. I’ll have to dedicate an entire post to the design some other time, for now at least I know what I want.

Keep dancing bitches.

I can’t really say I’ve been dancing but I have been running. Running so much in fact, I’ve only gone and entered myself into the Bupa 10k run next year. I’ll be begging your good selves and the general public for donations to watch me huff and puff around London with a face so red, people will try posting letters in my mouth.

It’s a tough job but someone stupid had to do it.

I physically cannot stand the place. And when you dread going into work, you know it’s time for a change.

So I changed, and took the little-too-late advice of that sad customer – and got a life. Or at least a new job. Which is a start.  Monday in fact. Now to fix the rest of my so-called life.

Hug anyone?

Oh ho! I hear you cry.

Why does that warrant a moan-laden blog post?

Because Heathrow airport is full of holes, so when it rains outside, it’s rains inside too!

There I was putting books out, as per usual, when I felt something wet spray lovingly across my face. Last time I checked there wasn’t much need for water in a bookshop; pages aren’t quite as readable when soggy. And the only time you usually feel a spray of wetness is when a person sneezes and the book they’re holding isn’t quite wide enough to catch the mist… before closing it gently and replacing it on the shelf.

God, I fucking hate it when they do that. Kids are the worst for it.

So either I was being sneezed on or there was a leak. Part of me wishes it was a sneeze; I’d simply shoot the sneezer a look of disgust and then be sick for the next three days. A leak was much worse. I’d have to mop up the water with some Starbucks tissues (because we’re too cheap to buy a mop) and then put a bucket out to catch the water, along with a sign saying “WET FLOOR, SWIM WITH CAUTION.” All that and I’d still have to call property services to tell them to mend the bloody roof.

So you see I wanted it to be a sneeze, really I did. A sneeze would have been easy peasy, lemon sneezy. Or something.

But it wasn’t.

It was a leak – a huge leak. And because the ceiling tiles were metal things with little holes in (think speaker covers) the water sprayed everywhere. The bucket (which was really an empty crate we use to transport books in) wasn’t big enough to catch the onslaught of water.

So I did my mopping, or rather tissuing and I put out my little crate (although fat lot of good that did as it had more water around the damn thing than inside it.) The only thing left to do now was to ring property services. And dry my hair. But I couldn’t find their number. And I didn’t have my hairdryer handy. It’s as if they didn’t want to be rung. So I did the next best thing. I went for a walkabout to find someone who knew. I’d barely gone ten paces around the corner before I saw it.

Buckets.

Everywhere.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Splash.

A multitude of WET FLOOR signs dotted around the place as if it was trying to tell me something. Oh it was. WET FLOOR.

CAUTION.

YOU MAY SLIP AND FALL AND BE FORCED TO CALL AN ACCIDENT CLAIM HELPINE AND EARN A FEW DAYS OFF WORK ALONG WITH SOME NO WIN NO FEE CASH…

Well, I could wish.

I stood short at 5ft4 looking all around me, for miles I could see nothing but little islands of people surrounded by water.

Well I wasn’t going to swim through that. I’m sure property services would’ve changed their number by now anyway seeing as they must have received about a billion calls from Heathrow today asking them to mend the BLOODY ROOF.

So I did what any upstanding employee would do, I turned back around and carried on putting out books.

I just hope someone remembers to empty that bucket…

Eventually I made it home after what felt like a very long walk of shame; my eyes could barely stay open long enough to see whether I was putting the correct key in the lock. And I was in my room for less than a second before I managed to somehow undress myself completely – before finally falling into bed.

For the past few weeks I’ve been somewhat sad about the fact I sleep alone; that there is no warm, pliable body next to mine to hold and cuddle in bed. But this morning, as I stretched my legs out, as I twisted my body horizontally across the mattress and bunched the pillows up into a comfortable mess underneath my head, I was glad there was no one there to get in the way; least not to see the state I was in.

The truth is, I hadn’t just got in from a heavy nights partying. I wasn’t even drunk. I’d just finished a twelve hour shift at work after a two week stretch of working myself ragged. The limp was from standing up and bending down repeatedly, from stretching, pulling and defending against the books which seemed to like falling on me for no other reason than to cause me pain. And my makeup was a mess from having my hands touch my face constantly, wiping away the sweat and tears of pure frustration.

My colleague and I were tasked with the impossible: to sort out and tidy the four stockrooms at work. Easy you think. But when you realise they’ve been used as a dumping ground for the last year and a half and that the only order they followed was chaos and lots of it, somehow it didn’t seem so easy anymore.

Indeed, there was many a time when I would randomly shout out in frustration, “What evil deeds did I do in my past life to deserve this torture – I’m a good person!”

My colleague could only agree and say he hoped that in his previous life he had tortured a whole myriad of people, in lots of nasty, terrifying ways. Only then would this hell seem worth it.

How many books I handled, I couldn’t tell you. How many particles of dust I inhaled, I couldn’t tell you. How many litres of sweat that poured forth from my being, I couldn’t tell you. I’d like to, but the numbers simply don’t register.

The physical aspect aside, it was the mental demands of the job which really got to me. It didn’t help that I was, and still am, going through a bit of a personal crisis. Moving books from point A to point B doesn’t require a lot of thought, just a lot of physical effort, and so I was often left with my thoughts. For two weeks I was constantly locked in my own head about the shit that was going on in my personal life; round and round it went driving me crazy. It got to the point where I very nearly spoke to a counsellor about things.

If it wasn’t for my colleague who listened to my fragile ramblings, I would have made that call.

I absolutely hate – HATE, talking about my problems to other people. I feel they are my burden to carry and no one should have that amount of crazy put on them. But being locked in a caged stockroom with only one other person, he sort of had no choice.

When I wasn’t trying to figure out WHAT WENT WRONG, I was breaking randomly into song. From Michael Jackson, to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, I sang it all. I could make a song out of anything. Even books.

For some reason (and that reason is no one buys them) we had an endless supply of Duncan Bannatyne books. It’s sad to say perhaps, but I even managed to create a little ditty out of those as well.

“Duncan Bannatyne… be my valentine… don’t let the sun shine… out of your – ARSE.”

Arse? My colleague enquired. That doesn’t rhyme with shine.

Well obviously, was my response. I just like the word.

I was truly inspired.

Or cracked.

The last day of our little project started at 6pm on Friday evening, and we worked right through until 6am Saturday morning.

As passengers started filling in at Heathrow to catch their flights, my colleague and I quietly exited the terminal. As people were coming into work, we were going home. As the day was just starting, ours was just ending.

What happened in the stockroom stays in the stockroom. And in the words of my excellent compadre and colleague, it’s been emotional.

Escaping the confines of my caged stock room earlier today, I ventured to the bathrooms; one of the many overused and abused locations at Heathrow. I was sitting on the toilet for no more than a few seconds when I heard the unmistakable cries for help in the cubicle next to me.

Help.

Excuse me.

Hello.

I’m stuck.

Hello?!

This went on for a few minutes whilst I tried to snuffle my laughter. I imagined a woman arse deep in toilet water, preferably unflushed. I imagined her scrabbling at the cubicle walls with her bare hands, perhaps a shoe coming off in the process.

Unfortunately, I knew better. For the past couple of weeks now I’ve had to listen to the repeated cries of help from various women (at least I hope it’s various and not just the same woman forever stuck) coming from one particular toilet cubicle.

I avoid this cubicle like the plague, it has a dodgy lock. But I do frequent the one next to it. I get what is effectivley front row seats to the most desperate sounding pleas ever uttered.

I need to catch my flight.

I’d like to see my kids again.

I can’t die in here.

Hello?!

Eventually some random toilet-dweller (that wasn’t me) came to the aid of the stuckee and offered this piece of helpful advice: Turn the handle to the right.

It won’t budge.

To the right. That’s the RIGHT.

It won’t move!

Talk about pointing out the bleeding obvious. As if the woman hadn’t tried opening the lock the traditional way beforehand.

Usually I grow weary before someone eventually lets them out but today’s locked in lady sounded particularly feisty, so I stuck it out while she was obviously stuck in. I was in for the long haul.

Ten minutes or so later, some cleaners arrived – I think they brought with them a mop. I’m still not sure how they expected this to help matters. But whatever they did try, didn’t work. I heard some scuffling next door and knew it was time to vacate my little hidey hole.

I flushed, pulled up my seriously dusty trousers and exited my cubicle. Then I saw it.

A leg.

Then another one.

The woman was only climbing over the top of the door! Her bag was strapped to her back to complete the ridiculous adventurous look. It was like watching Lara Croft scaling the great heights of Heathrow, only with a sheet of toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

I only pray tomorrow brings more toilet trouble. The things I live for.

I love doing this.

It’s the only perk of being a till drone for a few hours; well that and watching people’s reactions after asking them if they want to pay a penny for a bag… anyway.

So picture the scene if you will; I had a queue a mile long. Well, that’s not quite right, it was a mile long AND wide – damn passengers with all their carry on crap. There should be a rule… if you can’t CARRY it in your hands, then you shouldn’t be allowed to take it onboard with you.

Anyway, standing in the queue was a tired but very sweet looking kid who was waiting patiently for his mum to pay for their books. Like all greedy good retailers, we have a selection of products strategically placed around the till area to entice customers to buy them. Because we’re a bookshop, you might think we have, I don’t know… say bookmarks or pens placed around ours. But no, we have chewing gum, nail varnish and card games.

Clearly our retailer knows its market.

Eventually the little kid and his mother reach the counter and as I’m ringing up their items, the kid turns to his mother and says: “Mum I love you know.”

Aww. How sweet I think, as does the mother, who returns the sentiments and says: “I love you too.”

The kid looks confused, I merely wipe my forehead… by god it’s hot… as the mother simply smiles.

“No, no. I mean, I love you know,” he states again whilst pointing to the counter.

The mother looks at the counter.

“UNO? You mean OOH-NO - the card game?”

“Yeah. You know.”

I swear, that fucking kid made my day.

The airport is a trove of lost treasures. It was only last week I found a half eaten sandwich – barely a day old.

I kid, I kid.

It was actually a week out of date.

But yesterday I found something much better than a smelly sandwich. It was a note, a card in fact. Written to a very sexy, handsome (her words, not mine) Spaniard named Carlos.

If you don’t believe me, just enlarge the picture on the left and read for yourself.

You must be wondering why then, I had such a card in my possession. I am not, after all, a sexy, handsome Spaniard named Carlos. Far from it. But a card I had. And it got me thinking. If this Carlos really appreciated Gloria’s heartfelt (if a slab too much cheddar) words, then why was the card tossed by the bin  with less care than you’d find in an old people’s home?

I mean, he couldn’t even be bothered to get it in the bin, shows how much he thought of her.

And what’s with the name Gloria? Do you know anyone with the name Gloria who’s under the age of sixty? Because I sure as hell don’t.

So I put two and two together. And instead of making four, or even a funny five – I simply made a funny.

Of course! Gloria really is a sixty year old woman. She’s probably from Cornwall, hence the title of this post. And Carlos really is a sexy, handsome Spaniard. Only he’s leaving the country now isn’t he? He doesn’t want to be reminded of his holiday fling abroad in the chilly isles of the UK with a tea drinking, hair-curler wearing, shortcake eating, Gloria, does he?

So he left the card and Gloria’s heart on the floor.

Well Gloria, you didn’t make Carlos’ day, but you certainly made mine.

Now, if I could only find a fiver next time…