95 / 96 – BritPop and Lime Green Summers

As we draw a close to 2015, and approach 2016, it’s dawned on me that it’s been 20 years since one of the favourite periods of my youth.

I say youth, but does 20 years old count as a youthful age!?

Both 1995 and 1996 bring back many memories for me – thankfully most of them good! I remember feeling in just a bit more of a bouncy good mood and seemingly much more confident in myself for some reason, having been quite the shy lad for far too many years. I think that maybe the glandular fever, anaemia and fatigue I’d had flirtations with over the few years previous had finally been left in the past, and I never really felt I had anywhere near enough the fun in my late teens as I ought to have had.

I can’t even specifically put my finger on why these years have lingered longer in the annals than others. There were no life changing events, but the time just had a buzz for me that for whatever reason I’ve not been able to easily forget.

So what was it about ’95 and ‘96?

Maybe it was the music?

In the first half of the nineties, I found that there wasn’t a particular collective of music that I could (or wanted) to fall into. There were, of course, many fantastic songs during this period though – indeed one of my favourite ever songs came out in 1994 (Baby I Love Your Way – Big Mountain), but largely the charts felt just much of a muchness. And then out of the shadows of the rumblings of the Indie scene, came its commercial cousin: BritPop

 

It had taken me a while to get into any kind of alternative genres, as perhaps my tastes were limited? But once I’d listened to Blur’s ‘Parklife’ and Oasis’ ‘Definitely Maybe’ albums, I – like many others – fell straight in with it. Blur’s follow up album ‘The Great Escape’ came out in the late summer of 1995 and I loved it instantly.

There was also a huge amount of hype that surrounded BritPop, culminating in a media / press battle going on between the two powerhead bands previously mentioned. I suppose it was a modern day equivalent of the 1960’s chart battles between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (albeit not sales volumes wise) although those two legendary bands were actually on friendly terms with each other, and the same couldn’t be said about Blur and Oasis! It wasn’t just those two bands though – there was suddenly a ton of good music around. The Different Class album by Pulp, to name but one additional gem, had a number of songs that gave a keenly accurate soundtrack in representing the time we were living in.

BritPop has rightfully gone down in history as an immensely popular phase of music, and although it was all too short lived, it provided a helluva soundtrack for the mid-nineties.

To compound the zeitgeist I went with friends to Wembley Arena to see Blur in concert just before Christmas, and Pulp at the Brighton Centre a few months later. Bands at their peak and in their prime, and both were cracking gigs full of energy. Oasis at Knebworth was out of reach unfortunately!

It wasn’t all about BritPop though. Earlier in 1995, as a huge fan I’d been long awaiting the new Michael Jackson album, and when ‘HIStory’ was released, I wasn’t disappointed.

I’d also been to see The Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium, and the self-styled ‘Greatest Rock & Roll Band’ could still do the business and belted out their back catalogue in some style. And for completeness, even The Beatles made something of a comeback, having a hugely successful mini renaissance with the release of their Anthology series – in fact in 1996 they ended as the biggest selling album artists for the first time in nearly 30 years. Gradually building up my massive music collection, I was grateful to receive their ‘Abbey Road’’ album as a Christmas present in 1995.

Not only that, I was also happy as Michael Jackson attained the coveted Christmas number one single (when it actually meant something!) with ’Earth Song’, holding off The Beatles’ ‘new’ track ‘Free as a Bird’, and the respective versions of ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis and The Mike Flowers Pops.

The range of music was immense, and I could waffle on about loads more, but with the word count ticking up, I’ll summarise to say that we also had the euphoria of Three Lions, taking the already stunning Lightning Seeds further into orbit. Plus the phenomenon of the Spice Girls:

 

Not forgetting Paul Weller’s ‘Stanley Road’ and the return of George Michael – who’d been away even longer than Michael Jackson. And of course, the Return of the Mack…

Maybe it was the football?

This was also a monumental period for football. I’m not talking about Euro ’96 though, although that WAS stirring for the memory banks in many ways too, but ultimately football did NOT come home as we had ultimately wanted it to. As alluded to above, you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the football anthem ‘Three Lions’ being played from a pub or a car that summer – very catchy and emotive stuff.

No, I’m talking about the pitch invasion at Brighton and Hove Albion’s Soldstone Goldstone Ground as fans drew attention to the footballing world about just what was happening to our club.

 

Football often provides a backdrop to my recollections, but the period 1995 – 1997 inclusive was about as intense as I suspect it will ever be in my lifetime.

In April 1996 we played York City. We’d heard rumours that ‘something’ would happen, but no-one expected the scenes that followed at around 15 minutes into the game. I was in the North Stand and watched on as thousands of fans poured onto the pitch in a bid to get the game abandoned. The national media called it a ‘riot’, which it never was. There was a family in front of us on the pitch eating strawberries and cream from a picnic basket, whilst sitting on a rug. That is NOT the scene of a riot. After a few minutes, the game was indeed abandoned as both goal crossbars were snapped in half, making it impossible for the game to be restarted.

Thankfully it became quickly evident that hooliganism was not alive and well in England again, and that Brighton’s fans protests had absolutely been a cry for help. Our club was being ravaged by money-men and wrong doers, and we – the fans – were caring for it in a very animated way. It carried on in a similar vein for another 12 months, when we ultimately proved that off the field, fans united will never be defeated.

On the field it was very hard to get behind the team with such aggravation going on, but once the directors had left the scene, the focus and atmosphere at the home games in particular was spectacularly good, as we fought for our very existence. For a passionate football fan, these were thrilling times.

Maybe it was work?

Aged 20, I’d still not decided what sort of career I wanted to have (at 40 I still haven’t!) but work was at least relatively care free and fun during this time, as referred to in some of my earlier blogs:

Trollied Part 1

Trollied Part 2

Trollied Revisited

Christmas at work in 1995 was the start of some proper responsibility based grafting. My manager had broken her ankle just before Christmas and had to take the whole period off work, so with the deputy store manager having little faith in her understudy, I was asked to run the Deli over Christmas. I loved my first taste of properly being in charge, and I pulled up trees to make the counter as successful as possible over the main period of 21^st-24^th December. Considering I was quite the novice, we did spectacularly well. I finished at 5pm on Christmas Eve absolutely knackered, but I knew I’d done a really good job and consequently I got my first ever promotion at work – with my pay rising up to all of £6.50 an hour!

 

My achievement didn’t come without an element of jealousy from others sadly. Two or three work colleagues, who up till then had been really good friends of mine, turned on me simply because I wasn’t ‘one of the lads’ anymore in their eyes. Fair play to one of them, who some months later actually apologised to me for saying I’d had an attitude problem.

I firmly believed that no-one had any grounds to be so unkind – they turned on me just for effect. It made me think of something my Dad had said to me years before, in that your work mates are never your friends – just colleagues and acquaintances, and I should always bear that in mind. Maybe it’s too much of a generalisation, but there are strong enough elements to compound the theory on occasion. Bizarrely I got a second promotion at work just 6 months after the first and the new problem I had to contend with, was being intimidated. 

The store manager was literally a larger than life guy, and in all honesty I don’t recall more than 3 or 4 conversations I ever had with him in the few months we worked together. In the interview he asked me what I thought about people with a big ego. I honestly answered that:

“I can’t stand that sort of person” – to which he replied:

“Well you and me aren’t going to get along then!”

I still have no idea if he was joking. Either way, I spent most of the first month hiding in the toilets on my own at lunch break.

And people say I wasn’t shy…!

Oh, and a top tip for y’all: Do NOT date work colleagues.

#learningcurve

Maybe it was miscellany?

In 1995 I started writing poetry. I’d never been that fussed about reading poetry, let alone composing it, but I started in earnest and began writing down thoughts and poems about relevant things to me and ended up carrying on for years. It was always written in an emotional theme and always with a lot hope and desire that one day I’d gain a particular kind of contentment and happiness. I don’t think it was a coincidence that I more or less ‘dried up’ writing at around the time my son was born. It seemed that maybe as an unwritten statement many of my hopes had been reached.

I also had a car chase in the wee small hours with my lights out one night in the summer of ’95! The least said about that the better…!

 

In 1996 I bought my first desktop personal computer. Hardly anyone I knew had one – compare that to now, where people simply cannot operate their lives without such similar derivatives. Ridiculously it cost over £2000!

I also played a lot of snooker around this time and frequently went to ‘The 147 Club’ in Brunswick Street, Hove, which was always good fun. We always used to have a great laugh at the expense of the bar staff there – in particular a guy we used to call ‘Serge’, after the Bronson Pinchot character in the Beverly Hills Cop movies. One night a few of us won the £250 ‘cash pot’ out of the fruit machine which was a nice little bonus!

Maybe it was sociality?
I don’t know what changed, but from about mid 1995 I belatedly started having a decent social life at last – even going out clubbing midweek, whereas before I wouldn’t bother going out anywhere if I’d had a bath earlier in the evening as it just felt like too much effort.

Quite often from 1995 and even more so into 1996 (even though I usually had work the next day) I would end up nightclubbing down the Event II on a Tuesday or the Paradox on a Thursday – the so called ‘student’ nights. The booze was as cheap as chips (usually no more than £1.50 a drink) and there was a heavier emphasis on playing a lot more of the music I liked. It was far more commercial than would be heard on a Saturday at the same venues, so I was more inclined to enjoy myself for that reason alone.

 

I even hit a spell of doing what most 20 year old boys should be doing – namely being on the pull! Honestly this was a relief as I was starting to think my middle name was Chastity. Friends and family even pondered that I might be gay. I think my mum would’ve loved a big gay son!

It’s fair to say that I had no idea what I was myself though as a) I had so little attention coming my way, and b) I was pretty uninclined to try as I was too shy to ask anyone out anyway!

Anyways – actually managing to occasionally pull helped my confidence no end and socially I felt I’d grown up a bit at last… though in my naivety I recall getting stitched up very early in 1996. Me and some mates were at the Paradox and I wound up buying this one girl drinks all night etc. only for her to sod off without me come 2am

#morelearningcurves

I believe this was also the night when me and one of my mates got out of our Taxi about half a mile from home and, (as drunk) fell over and had a little sleep in the middle of the road! I reckon Taxis and any cars must have just driven round us paying little attention – we must have been there for a good twenty minutes though! I would guess it was the uncommon knocking back of the Jack Daniels shots earlier in the evening that did for us…

Another nights’ exertions lead to the aerial of my first car (a 1978 brown Mini Clubman – RIP) being snapped off by one jealous colleague, and an aggressive confrontation in a Sainsburys chiller by another jealous one! If this was the norm, I’d clearly missed out on this sort of fun for years. #evenmorelearningcurves

Another funny night was had at the Irish pub ‘O’Neill’s’ (where, incidentally, Brighton & Hove Albion was formed in 1901) with a terrifically funny guy from work and his family and mates (all Irish.)

His brothers were playing in a band there, and we got absolutely slaughtered on Guinness and I knocked back ten pints in just under two hours, ‘singing’ along to Irish songs I didn’t know the words to. I’d never drunk such volume so quickly before, and I’ve not done it since either, but the atmosphere was so good and everything just flowed perfectly. At around 10pm we staggered over to the night club and had to straighten ourselves out to make sure we actually got in – I remember being ordered to stop singing in the queue, or we wouldn’t be allowed in. Nightclub bouncers were often a different breed, but I never once got refused entry.

Maybe it was the Lime Green summer?

1996 was a glorious summer – and for no other reason than everyone seemed to be wearing lime green clothes for the duration, it was forever known to me by that moniker. On the beach or seeing customers whilst I was at work… it seemed to be the colour of choice everywhere.

 

Maybe it doesn’t matter…

I know that it Definitely Maybe wasn’t Maybelline.

But it was Definitely Maybe memorable to me.

 

The Music Quadruple

Over the past year or so of doing blogs, a fairly frequent theme I’ve exploited has been music.

Music lists are a fairly staple diet for bloggers. It’s the gift that keeps on giving as the various topics are probably limitless… Imagine if there was no music in the world. It’s pretty hard to do.

So far I've dabbled with quite a few musical topics:

Best Selling UK Singles

My Favourite Albums

Songs That Get On Your Nerves

Cover Songs

The Nation’s Favourite 70’s NumberOnes

Favourite Christmas Songs

Best Football Songs

Madonna Albums
Seedy CD’s

The Best of The Beatles

Click on any of the above to read!

But having had a blogging break, I thought I’d return with a few more personal tastes and create a series of lists on four specific topics:

My Favourite Songs from:

My Favourite Band (The Beatles)

My Favourite Male Artist (Michael Jackson)

My Favourite Female Artist (Madonna)

…and finally, simply, My Favourite Songs

I’m not here to inspire – I’m here to share!

#SharingIsCaring

The Music Quadruple –
Part 1 (Favourite Beatles Songs)

In part this blogging comeback was inspired by The Nation’s Favourite Beatles Number Ones programme that was recently on ITV.

I have to admit that this was far harder a list to compile than I thought it would be. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I found having to narrow it down to a top ten was nearly impossible. Ten doesn't sound a lot, but with the canon to choose from, it was still a tricky task.

The below are in alphabetical order, as frankly my head was hurting after just getting it down to ten, let alone ordering them into a numbered preference!

Across The Universe (WWF Version)

Favourite line: Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns

And Your Bird Can Sing

Help!

Here, There and Everywhere

Favourite line: Each one believing that love never dies, watching her eyes and hoping I’m always there

I Am The Walrus

If I Fell

Favourite line: Don’t hurt my pride like her, cos I couldn’t stand the pain, and I would be sad if our new love was in vain

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

Favourite line: I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me

She Loves You

Something

You Never Give Me Your Money

Favourite line: But oh, that magic feeling – nowhere to go

…and just think of all the songs that didn’t make the final cut. Gutted to cast away Hello Goodbye and We Can Work It Out!

THAT is why they are the best band ever.

The Music Quadruple – Part 2

(Favourite Michael Jackson Songs)

This didn’t get any easier. If anything it was harder, as the extra longevity of the singer meant the discography pool I had to choose from was nearly three times greater.

Again, a top ten was nearly impossible, it could easily have been fifty…

And also again, the below are in alphabetical order, as again, if I HAD to put them all in a specific order, I’d still be working on it now!

Billie Jean

Black Or White

In The Closet

Leave Me Alone

Man In The Mirror

Favourite line: If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make the change – you gotta get it right, while you got the time, 'cause when you close your heart, then you close your mind

Smooth Criminal

Speechless

Favourite line: Your love is magical, that's how I feel. But in your presence I am lost for words – words like, "I love you"

Stranger In Moscow

Favourite line: How does it feel, when you're alone and you're cold inside?

Tabloid Junkie

Favourite line: Just because you read it in a magazine, or see it on the TV screen, don't make it factual, actual. Then why do we keep foolin' ourselves?

Who Is It

Favourite line: She promised me in secret that she'd love me for all time. It's a promise so untrue – tell me what will I do?

…and a cursory mention for Got To Be There and One Day In Your Life. Hard though it was, I deliberately avoided the Motown years, simply because it made the culling decisions slightly easier! And I also really wanted to include Get on The Floor …so annoying!

And finally, I should say that I have nothing particularly against Justin Bieber – he’s merely just a bit of a harmless oik. However despite recent media attempts to place a crown on his head, he will never ever be fit to claim the title of King of Pop. Never.Ever.Ever.

The Music Quadruple – Part 3

(Favourite Madonna Songs)

And so onto Madonna, and another mammoth task to cull dozens of notable songs.

As before, the below are in alphabetical order:

Borderline

Dear Jessie

Into The Groove

Favourite line: Music can be such a revelation, dancing around you feel the sweet sensation

La Isla Bonita

Favourite line: I want to be where the sun warms the sky. When it's time for siesta you can watch them go by. Beautiful faces, no cares in this world, where a girl loves a boy, and a boy loves a girl

Open Your Heart

Favourite line: One is such a lonely number

Papa Don't Preach

Take A Bow

Favourite line: I've always been in love with you – I guess you've always known it's true

Till Death Do Us Part

Favourite line: You're not in love with someone else, you don't even love yourself

Waiting

Who's That Girl

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and whilst there may be many, many pretenders to the throne (Gaga, Cyrus, Minaj etc.) there will only ever be one Queen of Pop.

The Music Quadruple – 

Part 4 (Favourite Songs)

The final part of the Music Quadruple was actually fairly easy to compile in comparison to the above.

Favourite songs are usually so called for a reason, rather than simply sounding nice, so whilst people might look at the list and think ‘Really Bez!?’, I’d say you have to take into account that there will be genuine reasons for selections.

The below ARE in top ten order, and have been in place for years now. It will take a song of immense quality and significance for anything to be displaced, so The Glimmer Twins (sitting precariously at Number 10 below) can probably sleep easy for the time being.

10. Waiting on a Friend – The Rolling Stones

Favourite line: A smile relieves a heart that grieves

09. Lay Lady Lay – Bob Dylan

08. You Never Give Me Your Money – The Beatles

07. La Isla Bonita – Madonna

06. Tears in the Morning – The Beach Boys

Favourite line: Well you know I lit a candle – It's in my heart now where it glows. Day and night, feel my light it's gonna stand till my heart believes in what you chose

05. Summer (The First Time) – Bobby Goldsboro

Favourite line: I knew nothing about love – she knew everything

04. Under The Boardwalk – Bruce Willis

03. Listen to what the Man said – Wings

02. Man in the Mirror – Michael Jackson

01. Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty

Favourite line: When you wake up, it's a new morning – the sun is shining, it's a new morning. And you're going, you're going home

And I’ll leave you with a slushy bit of Motown:

“We’ve been together, for such a long time now, Music. Music, and Me”

Trollied Revisited

Okay so I know I ‘retired’ from blogging in 2015, but I didn’t say it was going to be forever! That said, this is not a full blown return to writing – it’s more like revisionism rather than recidivism.

Apparently it is good blogging etiquette for bloggers to go back and update old blogs with new light through old windows, although one could interpret this as the blogger has become lazy and / or so dull that they’ve run out of topics…

In short, I’m still on sabbatical but just fancied penning a final update to a couple of my most viewed blogs during the period I was actively writing.

This was triggered by watching a re-run of the Sky One comedy Trollied – a show which past readers will know I really enjoy, due to drawing comparisons with my own 8 years working for a major supermarket.

Shamelessly I've even tried soliciting for a cameo on the show, but unsurprisingly I have thus far been unsuccessful!

So anyways, this piece of writing is going to dip back in to tart up the originals, and add a couple of new bits… if you are willing to stay the course!

Trollied Revisited

So, the series link on my tellybox has informed me that Trollied is back for a SIXTH series this Autumn! This means I can once again spend several autumn nights reminiscing about how little has changed in the world of supermarket retail since I escaped in 1999. Having completed nearly eight custodial years, starting at the tender age of 15 years and 3 months (wouldn’t happen these days), it’s fair to say that I left (aged 23) with some interesting experiences, and not least a few life skills, such as:

• How to operate dangerous slicing machinery when drunk

• How to throw and catch rat poison traps

• What’s appropriate to eat on the shop floor – and what’s not

• How to go ‘missing’ when you’re in a store you don’t like working at

• How to keep your staff happy
• And how to piss your staff off

• How NOT to grate Parmesan
• And why no-one should EVER buy freshly grated Parmesan

…and that’s just off the top of my head over the last minute or so.

To those who have never seen Trollied, upon first viewing it might all seem a bit odd, and borderline crass at points. What they should be in no doubt about at all though is just how realistic Trollied really is. If you’ve done your time in food retail, then you will recognise exactly how accurate some of the apparent outlandish storylines actually are.

For the vast majority of the characters on screen there’s someone I can name from my time in store who IS that person. In fact the only thing that Trollied rightly chooses not to dwell on too much is the fact that some (not many) of the managers back in the day could be quite nasty individuals.

I’d like to hope that particular point has changed now.

So in comparison, and in addition to the storylines in Trollied, here are just a few blasts from the staff of the past:

• Sleeping on top of the warehouse chillers (knew a guy that did this at least once a week)

• Performing knee slides across the floor on night shift (every night)

• Wilfully damaging goods (I saw a guy do a meticulously planned flying headbutt into a pallet of 200 egg boxes) – in fact this same guy willingly let someone set fire to his hair in the canteen, just to see how fast it would burn. He also had a diary where he could mark off how many days it would be before he went sick again, without him being sacked for persistent absence. Oh and he also often spoke of wanting to put an end to his wife. Yes wife, not life. Something involving a train I think.

• Sex acts in the warehouse (didn’t witness this [or partake!] but it happened fairly often – and also in the customer toilets on nightshifts)

• Being chucked in the baler (the new kids on Produce)

• Eating food from the shopfloor shelves (standard practise)

• Describing fruit shapes to old ladies using genitalia innuendo (too many to mention, but mamba and aubergines are words that spring to mind... oh and horned melons)

• The legendary tannoy broadcast “This is a customer announcement. There is an urgent call for Mike Hunt, who is shopping in the store today. Please can Mike Hunt come to Customer Services” (I kid you not.) Later that night, by pure fluke, I actually met the bloke who put the prank call in. Turns out he didn’t work for us, but had done it for a mate of his whose last day it was.

• Managers ‘stealing’ other managers’ cars, parking them halfway across town and letting the tyres down (I loved working at that branch!)

• The Produce boy who happened to accidentally glance at the Bakery girl who was collecting strawberries from the warehouse. So she says to him “What the f*ck are you looking at?” ... Five years later they were married #romancenotdead

It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but you get the gist.

Ultimately, it’s all about the people, and I would still insist that most of the people I worked with were tip top characters, but that didn’t stop some of them being a bit odd!

Having been around for a few years, I was fortunate enough to get promotion a couple of times. The main one was becoming the new Delicatessen Manager at a store in Brighton, starting just three days after my 21^st birthday.

A Deli Counter. Not mine though... Mine was in colour

It’s fair to say that up till that point of my retail career, I’d seen a few things that had opened my naïve innocent young eyes a little, but nothing prepared me for the response I received on my first few weeks in that new role.

What could go so wrong?

Well specifically it was three things that made some of my new staff not that keen on me:

• I was introduced to them on the first day as God.
• I was young.
• I was male.

I was already feeling over exposed at the oversized tent of a suit I had to wear, but being introduced as The Almighty sank me lower than the Titanic. It was horrendously embarrassing, and I have no idea why my introducer opted to say that, but I think maybe because he had been looking after the counter in the absence of a manager and wanted them to think I was there to ‘save’ them. I REALLY had to underplay that title in the first few weeks to stave off fears of being called arrogant. Talk about a stitch up.

As for ‘being young and male’ – well they both sound ridiculously ancient don’t they? But it was a genuine issue as Deli counters traditionally (although not exclusively) had been a rather female dominated environment, and here I was, this 'boy', taking over the running of their baby and many of them were not at all comfortable with it. To them, I was the Anti Milky-Bar Kid in more ways than one.

It took a ton of effort to win certain staff over and prove I was worthy.

For example, during that first week I remember cleaning out the bins. I wanted to muck in and do everything and not be some aloof ‘suit’, so I thought this might help somewhat. Nope. The opposite in fact, as this action extremely upset one of the senior ladies as she’d done the bins on Thursdays for the last twelve years, and boy had I now stepped on her toes!

Whilst she was being comforted and consoled by another elder stateswoman (because she WAS in tears), my confidence wasn’t helped by the deliberately loud comment ‘I told them we should have been given a woman manager’

Lovely, heart warming stuff…

Altogether I had 17 staff, which included two male students, three female students, and the rest were females old enough to be my mother or grandmother. It would be wrong though to say that ALL the elder females didn’t want me there.

One Scottish lady in particular took to me quite early on and stated that she felt I’d been a bit stitched up, and that even before I’d arrived I was on a hiding to nothing as a colleague of mine at my previous branch had popped in the week before to ‘advise’ them about me. 

Her assessment being:

‘He’s a nice guy, but he’s not up to being a manager’

...which was ironic given that less than 12 months earlier, I’d had to cover her sorry ass over a Christmas period when she couldn’t cope when acting up as a deputy manager herself.

Bod was RUBBISH at Murder in the Dark

It was a shame to be knifed in the back before I’d even started, but she’d always been a touch bitter, having felt mistreated by the firm over her own career path over the years. I felt sorry for her but why try and hurt me?

Perhaps I didn’t help improve my standing with the others though as when appointing a senior assistant, I fairly opted for the best person. Following interviews, this happened to be another male.

The furore that kicked off simply because I’d given the job to a male was unbelievable. It took intervention from the Personnel Manager to sort out the ridiculous complaints (sexism, ageism, experience-ism!) that arose because of it. If it was sexism they were looking for, the staff on the Fresh Meat Counter were only three steps to the right!

Eventually they started speaking to me again, though it was probably several weeks later. In truth, their gripes were harmless – they just had certain standards that they felt were still viable.

I’m sure a lot of it was simply a generational thing, rather than a personal attack, and as such, when we see the Miriam Margolyes character in Trollied, I’m always reminded of a dear old lady on my team. Let’s call her Joan.

When I took up the role, Joan was already formally retired and worked two days a week, and in those 1990’s days of blossoming equality, she demanded to be treated as everyone else on the Deli counter – and rightfully so.

After a while she chose to ‘further’ retire and cut her hours down to just one day a week. This was fine, and I didn’t really give it much thought… but on the day of her retirement she refused to serve on the counter until she’d been given a retirement present by the store manager.

Staff that had been there long before me said this was now the FOURTH retirement she’d had (one day a week less each year) and frankly they were fed up with continuing to cough up money for her. We got over it by me buying her something out of my own pocket, under the auspices of a collection.

Joan was over the moon with the piece of wooden tat that ‘we’ had got her, but later that same day, she ran off from the counter crying.

One of the temporary staff members had told a customer that they’d be better off going to a rival store as we were rubbish, and Joan being the loyal soul that she was, took this comment as a personal insult to her, and she refused now to work with this "traitor!" – her words, not mine.

So now I had to be a peace maker and nigh on beg the offender to apologise to her. He was a radical, right wing political type (studying economics and politics at university) and this didn’t sit well with him at all, but thankfully he said sorry to Joan as a favour to me… but left me in the crap less than a week later by just not ever turning up again!

I wouldn’t say Joan came out of this well either though, as again on that SAME day, I had to leave early and caught her getting on the same bus as me, fully 30 minutes before she was supposed to clock off. Having been well and truly busted, she steered clear of causing me any grief again for a while.

Another staple of Trollied are the undertones of relationships. In all the stores I worked in, there was an incestuous undertone. Funny at times, but lurid at others.

On a personal note, no-one really fancied me much anyway, but I tended to try and steer clear of dating anyone from work. In fact I only indulged two or three times, which was enough, as it took no time at all for rumours to spread around the store as to what happened on such inter-staff dates.

One girl I went out with got bullied because I put in an order for her to have a new hat to wear on the Deli. ALL staff had to wear hats and she had simply lost hers. That was interpreted as ‘to get a new hat you must sleep with the Deli Manager’

It obviously didn’t mean that and, for the record: 
NO... I didn’t!

Then there was the checkout girl who had relations of sorts with at least a dozen other members of staff from the same store (seven in the same night if rumours are to be believed)… and frankly I lost count of the amount of senior managers visiting the customer toilets with checkout girls. And boys.

I even had my own brush with a ‘Mrs Robinson’ experience. To be fair I was 21, and she was only 34…but her 13 year seniority on me was quite something to experience! Additionally, when I was 19 I was accused of having an affair with my female manager, who was well into her 50’s #shudder … and NO, I didn’t do that either!

Care to do a stock check Elaine?

My last move within the company was sold as a promotion, but ultimate it lead to me departing the job within 8 months. Within a week of working at my new store, I knew I wouldn't be staying long. That was October 1998, and I left the company in May 1999, and those last 8 months were as bad as the previously 24 months had been good. This is detailed in the other blogs (see links below), but suffice to say it meant it brought a sadder ending to my time in retail than had been the prologue.

All in all the 8 years were mostly pretty good, and watching Trollied brings back some fab and funny memories. It’s very realistic and should be a real eye opener to those who think it is fiction. It isn’t!

Would I want to go back to retail though? Well never say never.

But no! NO! NO! NO!

So there you go – and just for fun (and to boost the site hit counter), the two original untouched blogs can be found by clicking the links below, so fill your boots:

Getting Trollied Again

It Was A Woman's World

And as I’m feeling kind, I’ll leave you with TWO top tips:

1. Never buy grated parmesan from a deli counter… 
2. When a can of beans rattles with a thud rather than a slosh. Don’t look inside.