Guest writer: GAB MSc, MD, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Today was a good day. Not an epic, truly Herculean day, full of achievement nor one filled with Hippocratic ‘doing no harm’, but a good day nonetheless. You see, every doc I know works gruelling hours, toiling for their patients, and we all need some rest – an occasional ‘mental health day’, if you will. For me, today was one of those.
As you know, I am a perpetually-busy, conscientious Type A body and so I was reluctant to spend the day in bed. Equally, I wasn’t fit for any gainful use of my time (the bathroom remains unscrubbed), so I racked my brains over a leisurely breakfast.
What do retired or unemployed individuals do during business hours? I needed something that didn’t involve Post Office queues, pointless wanderings on public transport or plotting a bank heist, so I hit on the ideal past-time – prospecting for bargains at the local Aldi store.
Aldi is an ultra-low-end supermarket frequented by the great unwashed and specialising in the employment of those with an MMSE of <19/30. By only taking cash, and by eschewing aesthetics, mood-lighting and clever packaging in favour of large piles of canned peas, Aldi manages to be extremely inexpensive for basic foodstuffs.
The ‘twist' that attracted me on this soggy December morning, is the stuff of legend – Aldi Thursday Specials. (Thursday, coincidentally is the day that pensioners and the unemployed collect their pensions and social welfare payments and Aldi wants in on the action).
The thing is, Aldi doesn’t do ordinary Thursday Specials… half-price peas…nah!, mark-down dishwasher powder, no chance!
But Specials they truly are, for nestled in between the ketchup (in tomato-shaped containers) and the gherkins-on-a-string were 1600W electric mitre saws with laser sights (Figure 1; note the fresh vegetables in the background).
cheeses is a set of electrically-heated insoles for your shoes – just plug into the cigarette lighter in your car for toasty toes (Figure 2)!
-GAB
2 comments:
DO IT!