cornucopia of condiments

Having opened my fridge this morning I realised that it's all very well and good having ghee and creme fraiche and mascapone cheese sitting beside jalepenos and chilli paste and mayonnaise but what the bloody hell are you supposed to do with it all if you have nothing to bind it all together?

A jalepeno and 3 week old philadelphia cheese spread sandwich does not a hearty meal make!

So! Off to the poopermarket I went. Being on benefits now, I like to do some of my shopping at (insert name of cheapo foreign poopermarket here: here's a hint though - not aldi's) which is just a hop, skip and a jump from my house. So, off I went with the trundle machine (the pram) and the spew bag (the baby) and my trusty flip flops-I dont stop to the shop.

First stop is the cash machine. As she said in Pretty Woman - 'Big mistake. HOOGE' (though I doubt it was spelled that way in the script). 2 cash machines. One is working. One is not. Many people queue for the working one. I join queue for working one. I wait, I look at my shockingly bad nails, I blow raspberries at Arlo, I send a wee text, you know the type of thing.

My turn to get money - message pops up 'this machine no worky no more, forgive me please, I know you are probably pissed off at me, but it no me fault, me a machine' so I hastily nip to the next one which appears to be working. In goes the card, tra la laa. In goes the pin number, tra la laa. I get my balance (not tra la laa, much lower than I thought) and I press 'yes' when asked if I want to withdraw any money today. Tra laa laaa.

I am already thinking about the bag of chocolate covered peanuts that are a bit like M&Ms (only cheaper and more of them) I will buy and eat in one big mouthful once I've done my shopping, for I am now a fully paid up member of the menstruating community once more (sorry, but it's a fact) and I need chocolate, dammit, when a demented beeping sound happens and my card peeks out of the machine.

Machine: beeepeeepeebeeepbeeepebeeeep REMOVE YOUR CARD AND YOUR CASH WILL FOLLOW

So I try to remove my card. My card is 1mm peeking out and I have sausage fingers. There is no way that I can remove said card.

Machine: beeepeeepeebeeepbeeepebeeeep REMOVE YOUR CARD AND YOUR CASH WILL FOLLOW

So I try again. But this time I say 'fuck' quite a lot but it doesn't seem to be helping.

Man standing behind me [speaking very slowly]: you need to take your card out of the machine and then your money will come out of here [points at the money bit]

It is too late to explain.

Machine: YOU DID NOT REMOVE YOUR CARD SO THE BANKING PROVIDER HAS RETAINED IT FOR YOUR SAFETY.

Me: Head goes red, inflates, explodes, grows back very quickly, commences big BIG growling.

So the story goes on that I can't get my card back, I have no other way to access my account (see, I chose a fab hip and groovy banking company because they don't slaughter guatamalans when they create bank statements but guess what? My nearest branch is in bloody Glasgow. Wish I'd looked into that!), so now we are living off a teenytinyevenwee-er budget than we were before till the frigging card comes through.

Bums bums bums. And I still haven't had my chocolate.

At least we've got ingredients there for an 8 day old lettuce & week old baked bean fricasse. What the hell am I complaining about?!?!?!?!