Cameras, Scameras, and Pizza

Eek. I woke up to a cloudy day. Nothing serious, and even as I ambled downstairs, the weather brightened. The sun came out, and it began to look like we were in for another nice day again.

After sitting about for a while, I decided to expand my portfolio a bit, picking out and printing my best/favourite photographs, and sticking them in a binder. After a bit of thought I managed to arrange four A4 photos in an A3 display book, by sticking two of them, one above the other, to a piece of card, and then sticking another two, one above the other, to the reverse. These four I then slotted into one of the plastic wallets in the display book.

Which was great until some dirt got in between the wallet and the photos, which muckied them up.
After a short time of swearing, reprinting, remounting and redirtying the photos, I gave it up as a bad job and decided to save my (expensive - thanks grandad) photo paper by keeping the slightly dirty (as in, have dirt on them, not dirty as in woman-not-wearing-any-clothes) photos I had already printed.

After a short time, my sister phoned, in true "sister" fashion, asking for my immediate help in the next five minutes, and any plans I had for today, be damned.
Of course me being the nice person that I am, and being completely used to this, agreed to help. A process which involved taking photos of the outside and inside of two houses which my sister and her friend are trying to get someone interested in.

So I spent a while wandering round taking pretty pictures and generally having a rather good time. Despite my nephew's (cute, then annoying, then boring) inability to understand that photos without him in it did actually and could actually exist :-).

Eventually though, we came home and shortly after, it was time for me to go to work.
Work started out extremely slowly. Very little to do, and no deliveries to speak of.

Eventually though, I was sent on my way with a delivery, and on my way over the bridge noticed something rather unpleasant. Well, in purpose if not appearance.

A very shiny and colourful but very spiteful and condescending "safety camera" van. Without going into detail, "Safety cameras" in this country have been widely discredited, and the only aspect of road safety despised nearly as much as them is the fact that there are some people who insist that they are there for the right reasons, in a perfectly detestable self righteous "well I don't break the law, so anyone who does should be punished" type way.

I ponder as to the success of the day's fishing (for the crew of the van, that is), and eventually arrive at my destination. During my conversation with the customer, I accidentally *ahem* let it slip that there is a camera at xyz location, right after the bridge sign, pointing south etc etc. "Just in case you're going out tonight".

The customer responded that he was in fact going out tonight, and would also actually be passing that way. I tell him his order comes to £16.46, as he gives me a £20.
I start fumbling for change, at which point he tells me to keep the change, as I've probably just saved him a £30 ticket :-D. Woo! £3.54 as a tip - that's a new record, and a fairly respectable amount for a night's total.

With a cheerful tune in my mind, I ride slowly back to the store, and approach the van's location. Normally I ride to the left of the road allowing people to overtake my slow vehicle, but this time I'm very pointedly in the right-third of my lane (we drive on the left in the UK) preventing all the traffic behind me from overtaking. Sure it must have been annoying for them, but I reckon the penny dropped when they saw the scamera van :-).

I cheerfully arrive back at work and continue with my shift.
Within an hour of the camera being spotted, a local "car meet" and half the city's taxi drivers were aware of the scamera's precise location. Loose talk costs money (ill-gotten money that should, by all wrongs, belong to the "safety camera partnership"), and all that lot. Oops, I'll have to do a better job of keeping it to myself in future.

I'd been refusing to finish my shift early, as I wanted the money, despite the absolute lack of activity. However, as the addresses of the next few deliveries appeared on screen, including the addresses of a few places in the less salubrious parts of town, I changed my mind. I said to my manager that I'd clock off early in return for "nom nom". After explaining that I wanted free food, he agreed, and I clocked off.

While my food was in the oven, I checked my account and went to the off licence/liqor store. I chatted with the staff for a while and finally bought my beer.
I checked the receipt later on, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that my beer £2.99 for 4 cans, x 2, plus £2.00 per can, again x2, plus some other items, (about £3 of chocolates and stuff), about £13.00 approx (I suck at maths) came to - according to the off licence's card machine, just over £5, which was duly debited from my account.
Seems their card machine sucks at maths too.

Did I report it?
I've already done my good deeds for today (the camera/speed camera thing). I felt entitled to be a bit of a bastard.

So now I'm drinking my extremely cheap beer, and eating my extremely cheap chocolate, and chilling out. £8 won't put the shop out of business. I work in retail, I should know :-).

But yeah. A very good day.

Enjoy :-).