At the weekend it was necessary for me to replace the batteries in one of my small hand-held appliances. So, as usually happens, a quick trip to the local supermarket to make one particular purchase saw me standing at the checkout with a hand basket groaning with various items.
Luckily they included the necessary batteries.
But during my trips up and down the aisles it amazed me to see the number of items thoughtless shoppers had just dumped on shelves apparently after deciding they didn’t need them or couldn’t afford them after all. You too have no doubt seen cans of soup deposited among deodorants, dishwashing liquid left abandoned in the biscuit aisle, and weedkiller among the baby nappies.
It appears some people are just too lazy to return unwanted goods to their rightful shelves. They just dump them wherever they can. The worst offenders are those who abandon fresh meats or smallgoods still wrapped in white paper and carrying their price sticker.
Of course those goods must be of no use to anyone after being left to warm on a shelf and, hopefully, they are thrown in the bin. What a waste. There are children starving in Africa, as my mother would say.
Like me you also may have seen the supermarket staff who must walk around their store retrieving such items and either placing them back in their rightful spots or discarding them. That too is a waste of time and money but only necessary because of the thoughtlessness of others. But back to my weekend shopping experience. As my eyes scanned the battery display they fell upon a rather ugly sight.
There among the larger heavy-duty batteries on a lower shelf, some kind consumer had carefully placed a half-eaten apple. Its formerly white flesh had browned quite nicely. No doubt it had been picked up in the supermarket’s fruit section and gnawed at until the anonymous shopper tired of having to move his or her jaws, and instead chose to throw it away, without paying for it.
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During the week it was my pleasure to stroll around the Queensland Art Gallery at South Bank. For that trip it was my usual displeasure to use the Cultural centre bus station, the subject of previous rants in this column.
Yet again it was my lot to witness numerous people missing their buses courtesy of the silly “lead stop” system employed at the station, where buses are not allocated specific positions along the platform but simply pull in behind each other with the first to arrive taking the first spot.
Again last week it was obvious how this system causes people to sometimes walk or run the full length of the platform in an effort to catch their bus. Again several people, including little old ladies, could not make the dash in time and had to watch their bus pull away without them.
As has been said on past occasions in this column, does anyone who designed this system actually ever use the bus station?
The Easter hols saw me head west in my trusty Land Rover to refresh my acquaintance with my country roots. My only regret was that my visit did not coincide with a B&S ball, knowing from experience just how much fun they can be for both a B and an S. On my way back to Brisbane my trip took me across a railway crossing, one without automatic flashing red lights.
The picture above shows the warning sign someone in either Queensland Rail, the Department of Transport, or the Department of Main Roads thought appropriate for this particular level crossing.
Is it just me or is it rather obvious that someone in a vehicle of any size attempting to cross the line would tend to give way to a train? Given that the locomotive alone would weight several hundred tonnes, it does seem like a sensible thing to do.
To my mind, putting a give-way sign on a level crossing runs the risk of having it treated the same way as most drivers treat them elsewhere – as a green light to roll through an intersection and stop only if forced to do so. Let’s face it, real-life experience suggests most drivers have no idea what a give-way sign means. Similar railway crossings usually carry a stop sign and a “watch for trains” warning which seems far more sensible to me.
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Speaking of the choo-choos, Your Ann had need to travel by City Rail again the other day, and was most amused as the announcements being made – over both the speakers and on the fancy electronic message boards in those new-fangled carriages – as we approached the Valley.
Please don’t hold me to the exact words used, but we were being reminded to take care “whilst” detraining from the service, and then to take care again “whilst” leaving the station itself.
Isn’t “whilst” a lovely, if old-fashioned word? Goodness, it must be quite a whilst since I last heard and read it in general usage.
