Unlike last week's visit to the world's politest supermarket, where I encountered a very friendly checkout lady who insisted on calling me "babe" throughout our conversation (so uplifting my soul no end), it was very much back to business this week in queue no.3. I can only think the "brighten up each customer's day through the repeated use of endearing (and amorous) short words of one syllable" training hasn't been fully rolled out across all the checkouts in the store...much to my disappointment.

However, and in spite of the freezing temperature, I did get a similar sense of uplifting self-positiveness when returning back to Ms J's with her treasure, so all was good in this little corner of the world. Just as Ms J was about to pour her usual generous serving of antibacterial gel onto my hands I pointed out I was wearing gloves - and so a mini woollen disaster was averted, and once we'd stopped laughing, we said our goodbyes for another week.