Supermarket photos

I took these photos in my local supermarket in May 2012, but they work well as a companion post (pretentious, muy?) to my recent article on supermarkets for Surrey Life magazine. 

I would like to have taken more, but it's impossible not to feel furtive with a camera in a supermarket. Even a phone camera.

I tweeted the shot below the day I took it and it was re-tweeted by my hero James Ward. Which made me happy.

I had terrible trouble with the glare on this Persil shot.

Terrible. I was getting lots of glare off the Crispy Minis too, so I took it from an angle, which rather diminishes the impact.

Finally, Cif. 

I was getting really jumpy by this stage, which might be the reason for cutting off of the spray handles of the bottles on the upper shelf. Well, that and being a terrible photographer. I think I put my phone away after this one and tried to pretend I was just browsing.

What an adventure.

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On the Mic - Surrey Life - May 2013

The June edition of Surrey Life is in shops now, featuring my latest column (on wanting to play Adam and the Ants on the radio) and a feature I wrote on Brooklands race track and museum. I'm quite proud of both. If you're interested, go straight down to your nearest Surrey newsagent and buy a copy. Or order one here, why not.  

May's column (below) was also one of my better ones, so I hope you enjoy it. This one is on supermarkets, brought to you in glorious monochrome.

I love supermarkets. I know many have been flogging us drugged-up horse flesh from Romania. But I love ‘em. 

Repackaging my little pony as prime beefburger is not their only sin. I’m aware some farmers hate them, and the mere prospect of Tesco setting up shop in a Surrey village can turn the most fervent free-market evangelist into a quivering heap of nimbyfied indignation. 

But where else are you going to get lager and cashback at 11pm?

That’s not to say I don’t support independent retailers in principal and practice. Every Saturday morning on BBC Surrey Breakfast my regular guest is Pauline Hedges, a director of Surrey Farmers’ Markets. She, more than anyone, knows the value and joy that can be derived from enabling a hyper-local supply chain to flourish, and she gets a weekly platform to talk about it, on my show. 

But I do love supermarkets. 

I love the way the doors are almost always open. I love the twofer deals. I even like the trollies. They’re built much better than they used to be, don’t you think? 

Once wilful reminders of humanity’s inability to manufacture anything that does what it’s supposed to, the modern shopping trolley is now a highly-engineered, pragmatic and efficient thoroughbred, partnering us in a glorious retail tango as we traverse the smooth-as-marble performance space.

Most people use television to put their brains into a semi-comatose, relaxed and suggestive state. I go to Sainsbury’s. 

We need food, I need to relax. I talk for a living, and in a supermarket, you don’t need to talk, especially with the self-service tills. It’s just you, your little metal chariot and the products. Mmm... the products. The enticing packaging and the promise of so much that’s good and wholesome - or thick and indulgent - underneath. 

It’s not just me. In his novel White Noise Don DeLillo describes supermarkets (with their “dazzling hedgerows” of produce) as centres of “magic and dread”. When the arch lyricist Jarvis Cocker narrates a relationship in Pulp's 1995 hit Common People, he locates the first date in a supermarket. As an arty-farty graduate with a degree in post-structuralist literary theory, I remember thinking “well, of course.”

Aesthetically, I will admit, they are a disaster. Who in their right mind has ever said “oh what a pretty supermarket”? It somehow gets worse when they try squeezing local/metro/mini versions into old pubs. 

Internally, we have to deal with strip lighting, freezing temperatures, odd smells (my wife won’t go in one supermarket because of the overwhelming stink of roast chicken that greets her at the door) and drab colour schemes. 

Then you have the pertinent arguments about food miles, the relationship supermarkets have with their suppliers, and their willingness to keep undercutting independents until local butchers, bakers and newsagents expire in little puffs of despair.

I could decide this is terrible, and that I should resolve to do my shopping in Walton-on-Thames high street without going to the nearby Aldi, Waitrose or Sainsbury’s. 

But I have to recognise I am what I am. A happy little supermarket consumer. And if that means I end up eating equine derivative from an unidentified east european abattoir, then I’m getting exactly what I deserve.

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April 2013 - on The Invasion of the Coffee Shops

March 2013 - There was NO column in March 2013...

February 2013 - on turning 40

January 2013 - why January should be about headaches, mild depression and whisky

December 2012 - on doing more stand up comedy

November 2012 - on stopping doing weekday breakfast

October 2012 - on trying to engage brain and mouth on air

September 2012 - on my BBC microphone

August 2012 - on the Olympics

July 2012 - on being on holiday with three small children

June 2012 - on joining a gym

May 2012 - on making live radio

April 2012 - on being ill

On being asked to write a column for Surrey Life magazine

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H&M muscles in on charity shop territory

Photo: H&M

The cheap as chips clothing store H&M has gone all socially responsible. Over winter they made a big thing of keeping their doors shut in freezing temperatures, and now they are offering to recycle your old clothes in exchange for money-off vouchers.

Mrs Wallis, who used to take her old clothes to charity shops, now takes them straight to H&M.

Photo: Caroline in the City blog

Most charity shops will only accept clothes they can re-sell. H&M will accept anything. If it can't be re-sold, your item will be made into lower grade stuff (e.g. cleaning cloths) or pulped and recycled.

But if your donation can be re-sold, it will be, and the proceeds will be used to "reward our customers" (i.e. grow the business) and "invest in recycling innovation" (i.e. grow the business). They say the initiative is non-profit making, which is disingenuous.

It's helping fund the company's expansion, grow its customer base and improve its brand image, all of which somehow might magically have a positive effect on the retail operation's profits.

There's no avoiding the fact that clothes which would otherwise go to the local Sam Beare hospice shop, or the Shelter shop or the Cancer Research shop (all on Walton High Street) are now going to a corporate behemoth.

Hang on, wait a minute, H&M also say they will make a donation to a local charity of 0.02 Euros per kilogram of clothes collected. Very sweet of them.

Whereas before the charity shops on my high street would get a kilogram's worth of clothes to sell (eg five shirts, which they could flog for £3 a go, making £15 in total), they now get one-and-a-half pence from H&M, subject to local taxes.

So what?

I have no problem with what H&M are doing. It's a great idea. H&M will take unwearable clothes, recycle them, and reward you in the process, which charity shops don't.

There is clearly a huge amount of money and brand risk invested in this and I think they ought to be congratulated.

But they are also aiming to generate revenue by directly attacking the central business model of most charity shops.

You would have thought a few people from the charity sector would have a word or two to say about it.

So far, I haven't heard a thing.

Source: Buddha Jeans blog

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Disclaimer: Permission for all image use in this post has not been sought, but relevant links have been added. If you are the owner of an image above and want me to remove it please contact me and I will do so directly.

The pie chart graph above is not sourced on the Buddha Jeans blog, and therefore may be rubbish, though I have no reason to believe it is. I'll try to find the actual source and re-link.

On the Mic - Surrey Life - April 2013

Harris and Hoole have been good to me. I produced a radio discussion about them on LBC. They were the subject of my first report on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show. They made for a nice little blog post on here, which got a few hits, because for a while, if you googled Harris and Hoole, it was in the top 10 results. It also made for a column in Surrey Life's April issue, which I can now re-publish (with a few tweaks) here. Enjoy, perhaps, over coffee.

The county is under attack. Just as HG Wells’ nineteenth-century Martians scrutinised and studied decent invasion sites near Woking, twenty-first century Surrey is being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than our own. 

Stimulant-mongers. Corporate drug pushers. Coffee sellers.

As a recovering breakfast show presenter, my relationship with the bean is deeper and more complex than that of a ten year old boy with his first Panini football sticker collection. I know exactly how and when to deliver the precise amount of liquified granules to my system in order to ensure optimum performance and concentration levels at unholy hours of the day. 

But I know what I’m doing. I understand the risks. I’m a professional. What worries me is the creeping colonisation of our town centres by caffeinated drug dens, indiscriminately emptying their black gold into the veins of an unthinking populace.

At first coffee houses seem benign. Warm, welcoming and comfortable. But then more appear, and soon everyone is wandering about clutching giant cardboard beakers, yabbering incessantly with wide-eyed abandon. Enough is enough. Surrey is in the grip of an addiction. It’s time to to wake up and smell… er… no… hang on...

In my town, it's completely out of control. When I moved to Walton-on-Thames seven years ago, we had Starbucks, Caffe Nero and a couple of independents. Now we’ve also got a massive Costa, a Muffin Break (?!), three more independents and pretty much every pub and restaurant flogging the stuff. The local mini-Waitrose has even started selling takeaway cappuccinos, just in case anyone can’t finish their shopping and make it to the nearest dispensary without grabbing one for the road. 

Which brings us to the Tesco-funded Harris and Hoole. With a name like that on the shop-fitter’s boards I guessed, before it opened, a new chain of ambulance-chasing high street solicitors would be alighting in Walton. 

Then - bang! - without warning, another retail space full of comfy seats, intoxicating, steamy smells and funky but unobtrusive tunes appeared.

Excitingly, it’s from within this controversial new set-up your intrepid reporter is communicating with you now. I’m in the belly of the barista!

Like its competitors, Harris and Hoole make buying your drink a challenge. I asked for a medium-sized strong-ish coffee with hot milk. I swear this is the conversation that followed, verbatim:

“Filter?”

“No, freshly brewed.”

“Our filter is freshly brewed.”

“Well I don’t want filter. I want it made through the machine - an Americano with hot milk.”

“Ah yes! An Americano. Well, actually it’s not an Americano here, it’s a Long Black.”

“A Long Black then.”

“What size would you like?”

“Medium.” [I already said that]

“And do you want the hot milk in it or on the side?”

“I don’t care.”

“Do you have a loyalty card?”

“Yes please”

“No - do you have one?”

“No.”

“Do you want one?”

“Is this a test?”

Even after paying I wasn’t allowed my coffee. I was given a black plastic slab with red lights on and told not to return until the lights started flashing, which they did as soon as I sat down.

Don’t get me wrong. I quite like Harris and Hoole. All bare brick, wooden floors, free wifi and friendly smiles. I was going to mention I don’t really rate their coffee, but having hinted as much a couple of minutes ago to the lady clearing my table she has insisted I try two other different coffees for free. As a result I’m completely off my nut, unable to coherently enunciate my own name, let alone decide whether I’m ever coming back. 

Maybe a county full of coffee shops isn’t a bad thing. It used to be estate agents, and it’s impossible to have a nice sit down in one of those without someone trying to sell you a house. 

You can’t help  wonder how we survived perfectly well before this bizarre mania got hold of us. But they said that about dishwashers, tablet computing devices and Mr Whippy ice-cream. The modern world is exhausting. But at least there are plenty of places round here for a pick me up.

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March 2013 - There was NO column in March 2013...

February 2013 - on turning 40

January 2013 - why January should be about headaches, mild depression and whisky

December 2012 - on doing more stand up comedy

November 2012 - on stopping doing weekday breakfast

October 2012 - on trying to engage brain and mouth on air

September 2012 - on my BBC microphone

August 2012 - on the Olympics

July 2012 - on being on holiday with three small children

June 2012 - on joining a gym

May 2012 - on making live radio

April 2012 - on being ill

On being asked to write a column for Surrey Life magazine

An automotive mystery

This is my car.

I know it calls to mind a large silver potato, but I like it.

It's a 5008 1.6 HDi Sport which I bought a couple of years ago from a nice lady called Laura at my local Peugeot dealer in Walton-on-Thames. It hasn't yet had its first MOT, and as you would expect from a new-ish car, until recently, nothing has gone wrong with it.

In fact, it has been spectactularly reliable, starting every time in freezing weather, and dealing with its main tasks well - transporting the Wallises around Walton, getting me to Guildford to do my breakfast show and once in a while taking the whole family and an enormous boot full of stuff down to Devon. It's easy to drive, it's economic, and it's comfortable. As I said, I like it.

The mystery begynneth

On 24 March this year, the tank was almost empty, so I put £49.17 worth of diesel into it at pump 7 of the "Ashford Connect" Sunbury-on-Thames BP garage just before 4.03pm. I know this because it's on my receipt.

There was a note on the pump which said the pump was pumping fuel very slowly and that the garage was aware of this. It did pump fuel very slowly, which is why I didn't fill the car up.

After a few days of pottering around locally we packed up the car and drove to Devon with the family for a short break.

As we left the M25 to join the M3, a beep sounded and warning message flashed up on the car's data screen. It said something about a fault to the emissions system. Oh good. An engine-shaped yellow light on the dashboard switched on. The car's electronic management system went into limp mode, which limits the car's revs, but still allows you to drive.

As we continued along the motorway, I asked Mrs W to havea look in the 5008 handbook to see if we could find out more about the fault and how serious it was.

The manual says the dashboard light we were looking at indicated an "emission control system" fault, which tallied with the message on the data screen. The advice was to "contact a Peugeot dealer urgently".

I have driven a Peugeot before when a warning message flashed up demanding I stop the car immediately. As it was not the case in this instance, we decided to carry on driving to Devon and take the car to the Peugeot dealer in Exeter, the next day.

So on Tuesday 2 April I pitched up at Truscotts of Exeter and handed over the car. There was to be a diagnostic charge, which would be refunded if the fault was under warranty.

The following day I received a call. "There's good news and bad news, Mr Wallis" said the lady at Truscotts. My heart sank.

"The good news is the fault which we think is causing the warning light to come on can be repaired under warranty. The bad news is that we think the fuel in your tank has got contaminated. The diesel filter is clogged and the engine is going to need to be drained. And that's not under warranty."

It was going to cost around £350 to drain the engine, and £91 for a new diesel filter.

How, I asked, could my fuel tank have got contaminated? I got a verbal shrug.

I ended up speaking to Colin, the chief mechanic, who said they checked my diesel filter and saw it was being clogged by a gooey substance, much thicker than normal diesel, so they took a sample of diesel out of my tank and it was neither diesel-coloured, nor did it smell like diesel.

I was perplexed.

I couldn't afford to drain the engine, but the implications of not doing so were potentially catastrophic. If, against the recommendations of the dealer's mechanics, I did nothing, I could destroy my car's engine, which would certainly cost more than the £450-odd quid they were proposing to drain my tank and engine and replace the diesel filter.

I decided to take a risk. As this supposedly ropey diesel had managed to get me all the way from Walton to Devon, and because the tank was nearly empty, I would replace the diesel filter, and then fill up at the nearest garage in order to dilute the fuel that was left.

Colin felt this was okay. I asked Colin to keep the dodgy fuel sample he had taken from my tank, because I would be taking this up with BP.




Normal diesel (L) and "my" diesel (R).


On picking up the car Colin not only brought out the bottle of fuel that was in my car, but another bottle containing normal diesel. Normal diesel is dirty yellow. "My" fuel was almost brown (see above). He also showed me my diesel filter. He took out the dipstick on the filter and showed me how tacky the residue was, when it should apparently be much thinner.



My finger is connected to the dipstick by dirty diesel. Filter in background.

I paid my £91, left Truscotts, went straight to the nearest garage, and filled the car up. We drove around Devon for the remainder of the week and then back to Walton without any further problems.
BP says its nothing to do with them, mate

On my return to Walton I found the BP receipt and called them up. They agreed this was a serious situation, and would be investigating. I told them I had a sample of the fuel, which they were welcome to examine.

I left it a week, then chased them up. This is the email I got within two hours:

"Dear Mr Wallis,

Thank you for your phone call received in this office on 09-Apr-2013 concerning your recent visit to Ashford Connect - 3013. Firstly, please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may have been caused. We have now investigated the matter fully and can assure you of the following:

The relevant storage tank at the site is linked to an electronic gauging system and this will indicate the presence of water in the tank on the daily readouts that are produced. There have been no occurrences of this during the period under investigation.

In addition, we have not received any other customer complaints relating to fuel quality concerns, or reports of vehicle breakdowns, at this location. Experience has shown that if fuel were to be sold that was contaminated, we would receive a number of complaints in very quick succession, due to vehicle breakdowns, and we do not have any evidence of this being the case. Given the high throughput of fuel at the site we would have expected a considerable number of complaints if a fuel contamination had occurred.

For the reasons stated, we feel that it is highly unlikely that the problems you have experienced are attributable to either the site or the product. However, I will continue to monitor any activity relating to fuel quality concerns at this site.

Thank you for taking the time to bring the matter to our attention and I am sorry that I am unable to respond more positively to you on this occasion.

Kind regards,

Anita
Retail Customer Care Team"

I was perplexed. So I wrote back:

"Hi Anita

Thank you for your email. I now have a problem in that I have a bottle of diesel which my garage say was taken from my tank which looks tainted, and which the garage say had clogged up my diesel filter.

I am absolutely certain my tank was not tampered with after I filled it at a BP garage.

When I filled the tank at your garage it was virtually empty so the diesel could not have come from any other source.

There are two other potential explanations:

a) contaminated diesel got into my car manually or accidentally without my knowledge (virtually impossible)

b)  [--------- REDACTED ----------]

Before I go down the route of raising the possibility of the latter with the garage owner [REDACTED], is there anything further you can do for me - eg possibly have the fuel that is in my possession analysed?

Yours

Nick"

A reply from BP came back the next day:  

"Dear Mr Wallis  

I tried to tell you in my last email that this is not our problem, but you're obviously too thick to understand. Allow me to be explicit: THIS IS NOT OUR PROBLEM.  

Now, bugger off.

Anita
Retail Customer Care Team"

Not really. What I actually got was this:

"Dear Mr Wallis,

Unfortunately we cannot help you further.

You can have the fuel investigated but not at our cost as there is no evidence that the contamination happened at a BP garage.

As it would have been the case, many other customers would have complained.

Kind regards,

Anita
Retail Customer Care Team."

Fair enough. I suppose they could be lying about the lack of complaints and dodgy readings, but how would I know, unless affected people posted their experiences online or contacted the media? You have to take this sort of thing at face value.

So whodunnit?

So how did brown-ish filter-clogging diesel get into my car? I wrote an email to the customer services lady at Truscotts in Exeter:

"Hi Claire

Thank you for the handwritten note I received shortly after returning from our trip to Devon. Problems with cars are never good and this was particularly unfortunate in its timing.

As you can see from the email below, I have been in touch with BP with regards to the possible fuel contamination which led to you recommending I drain the tank and engine of my vehicle of fuel and the replacement of my diesel filter. As you may remember, I decided against the considerable expense of draining the engine, but did consent to the replacement of my diesel filter.

According to the email below BP have conducted their own investigation and believe the fuel they were selling (and I have the receipt which recorded the pump/date/time/location etc) was as it should be.

It would be virtually impossible for anyone to contaminate the fuel in my tank in the period between my filling up at the BP service station and my handing it over to Truscotts.

Is there any way the fuel in my car could have been contaminated whilst it was on your premises? Perhaps through the diagnostic process which led to the discovery of the fault which was repaired under warranty.

I simply cannot understand how the fuel in my tank could have got contaminated and I am determined to get to the bottom of it.

As a journalist, I don't like mysteries, especially ones which leave me out of pocket.

If you can help in any way at all I would be most grateful.

With thanks

Nick Wallis
(owner of Peugeot 5008, **10 ***)"

That was eleven days ago. So far, I have not received a response from Truscotts of Exeter. So I sent them another note yesterday, to chivvy them along.

If anyone else has had a mystifying fuel contamination experience with their car, please do get in touch. I would be very interested to hear from you. Or if you have any suggestions as to what I should do next, I would like to hear them.

I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. I just can't think what it is.

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