Jae: Volume 3, Issue 1

Last night I stayed behind late at work, as is usual Friday night procedure for drinks in the kitchen. This time we were there to pay our regards to Vince, a guy who started just a few weeks after I did, who is moving on. By the end of the night it was just Christina, Frankie, Anthony from Accounts and I left bitching and gossiping about our colleagues. I may have revealed too many secrets myself but I did also learn a lot about what is being said on the office IM facility that I was totally unaware of! Scandals all around!

Today Jim and I headed off early to Catford for an excursion to Aldi. Yes, Dear Constant Reader, you heard me. Aldi. I had read in the Guardian that it was actually not so bad and wanted to see for myself. Having experienced the joys of Lidl once too often myself I'd always been reluctant to try out Aldi but it was ok. But as Jim said... it was a little odd. Ostrich? Wetsuits? Climbing harness'? Weird. But we picked up a few things.

Then we went in search of a duvet cover set which lead us deeper into Catford... Catford gives off a certain aura. It takes me back to the early nineties. The cleaning fluid smells that emanate from some of the stores put me in mind of walking past Superdrug in Snodland as a child. It's not exactly an appealing place and the bizarre, dirty and somewhat creepy store we eventually found the duvet set in made the point perfectly.

However there is a diamond hidden in this rough. Hidden within the bowels of the Catford Mews Indoor Market is a small bookshop. It's one of those bookshops that you just don't see enough of. Sure it's a mess, but it's a joyous mess... books piled 20 high, with pile hidden behind pile until there is barely any shop floor left. Jim had mentioned I'd like this place but surely there was no way he could know I'd like it that much!

And lying on the floor by the door were two boxes of unorganised comics... DC, Image and, delight following delight, Marvel. Nothing really took my fancy there but after the shop keeper had seen me practically orgasming in my comic geekiness he found piles more... and I came away with a few... Fantastic Four, the Avengers and, of course, some X-Men. Awesome! I may make more trips there...

On the way back to the car there was an incident with a road rage induced driver shouting abuse at us as we had been half way across a road when he turned into it and expected us to jump out of his way rather than continue across at a steady pace (and you know my pace is plenty fast enough... it's like 50 metres a second! :p)

We had lunch at the local... pizza, beer and a delicious chocolate sponge with vanilla ice cream. Delicious.