Queue Goblins II

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I know, I know, I've banged on about these beasts before but, Jesus, they don't know when to stop, do they? No, literally, they don't. I'm talking about the idiot shoppers who walk through the doors of a shop before stopping dead to gaze about the place as if it were the Sistine Chapel. Sod the poor bastards who have slammed into the back of them and are now piling up like motorway slush. Same goes for escalators. These goblins have all of 20 seconds to get carried from one floor to t'other - so it's safe to assume they know they are on a moving stairs in a shop - before stumbling off and coming to a dead halt at the top. Behind them there's carnage on the conveyor belt of humans, hair snagging, limbs tangling and infants disappearing into the greasy workings below.
Please, someone tell me what it is like to be so utterly bewildered that, even when you're entering a shop so rammed that you need to breathe in, you actually forget that you are in the company of other human beans? That welding yourself to the spot in the very doorway of the store makes a stunning amount of sense? Don't these people fret about the amount of snot that's being smeared on their coats by the poor bastards behind them?
And it's not that I'm an advocate of rushing about the place like a Broadmoor escapee. It's just that neither am I a fan of having intimate lurchings with whoever the frig has ground to a halt in front of me either. Look, if I want to find the hot cross fucking buns in Asda I'll make an educated bet that they're in the bread aisle and keep walking towards it. I won't set up camp in the foyer and rummage in my bag for my bloody radar equipment. 
Shopping is enough of a pain in the arse as it is. This idiocy really isn't helping is it, my little store-struck friends. Just put your brain in before you get your purse out and, to revert to the technical jargon, shift your frigging arse. 
I've said it once and I'll say it again. Goblins. 

By now you should have gathered that I, The Kraken, am prone to arsiness. In fact it is my default position. Which is why, even though I have had a perfectly perfunctory day for a woman on the edge, the following two incidents are even now, hours later, doing my frigging head in:


Queue goblins

Feel free to kick me

Are people terminally retarded? No really, are they?  Well they were in A Shit in the Dark this afternoon (it's actually a coffee shop called A Shot in the Dark, but c'mon). That's because after queuing for ten mins to be served, with said queue snaking alongside a giant, wall-painted menu, I witnessed queue goblins. First they got to the counter and acted astounded, as if they thought they were really queuing for cervical smears. Then they became feverishly overcome at being expected to order food and drink. Beads of sweat broke out on a forehead over some internal Coke/ Sprite debate one of them seemed to be grappling with. And to cap it all off the goblins were visibly dragged closer to the edge of their pitiful existences when they were presented with payment options. So what do you think they did next? Paid for two cans of pop and a slice of cake with a fucking credit card. Like I said. Goblins.


Oliver Twist
Well, a re-enactment of it at any rate, at my local library this afternoon. There I was with Ava, pawing through the books when some scruffbag/ urchin hybrid appeared with her little brother. Ava knew them from school (the eldest was four) but I swear to God they'd lurched straight from some Dickensian novel via a Dr Who-style time twist. Not only did they look as if their last bath coincided with the Royal Wedding but their mother was noticeable by her heartfelt commitment to the computer she was glued to in the IT room. Which meant she didn't see them when they ran into the staff rooms and started pulling books about. Neither did she see them when they scampered out of the library to play on the roadside. Jesus, talk about fodder for fiddlers. I watched this carnage for half and hour, during which time she neither looked at nor spoke to said offspring. Lucky then that, being a fretful Kracken, I took it upon myself to those jobs for her. Hope the Castle Bingo website was worth it.