So, before I begin, I better apologise for missing the first Tuesday blog post that I said I was going to do. In my defense, I was just being an idiot. On Monday I remembered that I was going to blog tomorrow and was quite looking forward to it, and then today (which in my head is Wednesday as I'm just heading to bed now) I was like "oh ok, I'll blog today... hang on a second, where's Tuesday gone to?!"
Tuesday was, incidentally, an awesome day, but when I tried to write about it just now it sounded boring so I stopped. Instead I'll just tell you something funny I heard this evening...
In our house we have a lovely friend who comes round for dinner every other week, I'm going to call him Little Dave but that isn't his real name. He's in his early 50's, with some kind of learning difficulty, and we love having him round because he takes such delight in everything. Now, last week a few of us went round to his for a visit and he'd done us lunch, including an apple pie bought from Tesco. For those of you who don't know, Tesco are a massive, über-cheap, supermarket that is gradually taking over the world - when I flew to Budapest once the first thing I saw out the window before landing was their smug luminous sign, acting as a dismal reminder of all that is wrong with globalisation.
There's a bit of history to this. I live in a part of Bristol called Stokes Croft, which is a sort of artsy pretentious urban ghetto with a lot of issues but also a lot of people wanting to see change. Community is really important to folk around here and there is an organisation called the 'People's Republic of Stokes Croft' (or the prsc - see the website(link) if you like) that are a big part of promoting that, partly through activism. They also coordinate a lot of graffiti in the area. Lately the main campaign has been against a Tesco that was granted planning permission, and a while ago we agreed to have this image put up on the side of our house, in plain view of the main street:
I find the man a bit scary, but it's cool to be able to tell people where you live by identifying the patent political agenda on the side of your building. [As an aside: something I've just noticed is the way the traffic light is on amber... you don't know if it's about to go red or green - stop or go - like the verdict on the appeal.]
So anyway, back to the story. Little Dave last week was so chuffed with his £1 apple pie that he declared he would write a thank-you letter to Tesco; and today we found out that he did! However, the key bit was when we asked what they said in reply and he said "they send their regards", meaning to us!
Probably sounds a bit stupid to anyone else, but the idea of Tesco sending best wishes to a household of people who are, at least as far as visual impressions go, the most anti-Tesco people in the whole of Bristol (nay the world) really made me chuckle. It's also quite lovely - as Dave would say - to think that in the middle of all the angst we could potentially see a little bit of good in Tesco. I'm not much persuaded in actuality, but there are people behind the power and Dave's innocence has brought me a little revelation that even public enemy number ones need to be loved.
Kinda reminds me of the story about my friend who, when she was 11, tried to send Osama Bin Laden a birthday card.
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