Morris Dancing Is My Life - Part 1

Yesterday I was mugged by the retail chain HMV. There was no violence, but it was definitely a mugging.
I bought a computer game. They’ve re-issued Goldeneye and I was lulled, by nostalgia and the desire to pretend to kill people from a distance, into buying it. It’s a good game. So the sleek and practiced thug who bags up my purchase nonchalantly throws in a bit of over the counter banter.
‘It’s only a pound to insure it for a year. In case it gets scratched.’
Now I never buy this sort of insurance since Lynn Faulds Wood
(mother of quintuplets Ben Folds Five) off of that Watchdog convinced me it was tantamount to fellating an uncircumcised incubus and not nice or good for me.
But it’s only a pound. And what if it gets scratched ?
So I hand over my shiny quid and slope off home to kill Oddjob.
Obviously the game doesn’t work.
There are rules to these sorts of things, and it follows that if I buy insurance for the first time, I’m going to need it.
Now all I need is the receipt. Which I had, of course, thrown away. A trivial matter to get it out of the bin. Except fate is conspiring this week, the stars are in alignment, Tarva and Alambil are in conjunction and Coriakin-invisible is taking a big thick piss in my mouth.

The Duck’s Egg’s Tale
I bought half a dozen duck’s eggs this week, from a farmshop. Big yolked, unpasteurised loveliness. It’s not much of an anecdote and you can see where we’re going. Now, I cooked four of them for breakfast, but two, because my fridge is a bit on the knackered side spontaneously froze. So I unsentimentally dumped the two frozen unfertilised embryos in the bin. They had gone gelatinous and by the time I threw away the receipt, they were a little on the ripe side, in a way that only an oriental gentleman can appreciate. Just to set the scene I also dumped half a dozen full nappies from a teething one-year old into the receptacle. Now she is an angel, so much so that her feet don’t quite touch the ground, but don’t let anyone tell you that their brown jewellery doesn’t smell just like everyone else’s.

Now there is a ray of light here. One I don’t deserve. The angel’s mother, herself a paragon of loveliness intercedes.
It is at this point Simon Bates should start playing the music from ‘Our Tune’ (itself the tune from Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet –the one with Michael York).
I pop out to buy some milk and when I return there is the receipt on the table. My wife smiles like the saint she is and I resolve to buy her some wings. I’d write to the Pope about her, but he’s a former child Nazi who’s become something much worse, and I don’t really want to court the favour of the invisible man with a beard.

All chipper I’m back to HMV to be greeted by a different sales assistant. She’s all cheery and has bright orange hair. At least she is until I explain my difficulty.
‘This game. I bought it here, yesterday. It doesn’t work. I keep getting an error message. Can I have a new one please ?’
She consults with her brethren.
‘Sorry. We’ve sold out.’
‘Well can I have a refund ?’
Pause. Hasty huddle around the cauldron.
‘Yes. You’ll need to sign here and give your address.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘We can’t authorise the refund without it.’
So I get my refund. But there’s,in the words of Columbo,
“One small thing bothering me.”
The pound. That has not been refunded.
Now I know. It’s only a pound. But you see it’s mine.
I paid a pound for insurance for a game which I, through no fault of my own, no longer have.
‘You haven’t refunded the pound.’
‘We’re not authorised to.’
They say that Lucifer was a redhead.
I get a look that tells me it’s only a pound and would I please go away because I’ve interrupted their day enough. And I know it’s not their fault. But it is somebody’s and they’re going to pay. The very precise sum of one pound because it’s mine and I want it back. And I know how. Using Morris dancing.

Simon Fox is the CEO of HMV, he lives with his wife and three children in Berkshire. And he owes me money