Ice crystal circle around the sun, Carine, April 1981. © PJ Croft 1981, 2015

Urrrrgh. I made a mistake yesterday. I went shopping.

First, I had a haircut at the local barber. I waited nearly 20 minutes for the sole barber to finish the only guy in a chair. I was nearly ready to ask if it was going to be much longer. Then when I finally got my turn, she spent less than ten minutes on me, with none of the neck shaving or blow drying that they usually do. I was surprised when she whipped the sheet off, and she still charged me full price, $21, even though she knew I am a pensioner. I came away feeling I won’t go there again.

Then I drove to Joondalup and once again got a horn blast from a damned tray backed 4WD tradie at a roundabout. I was almost exiting and he was well clear of me, but he blasted me near the end of the merging process. They won’t merge! I’m sick of these louts.

Then I got to Joondalup and saw a bay in the Parents with Prams and Seniors section. But there were two women just standing in the bay with a pram. I indicated that I wanted to park there and got a bugger off, this is a parents with prams blast. I held up my ACROD sticker and said I’m entitled to use these bays, but they wouldn’t budge. I drove on and found a normal bay around the corner.

Next thing, after I’m out of the car, a big, grossly fat, ugly bloke comes up to me and says, “There’s a disabled bay there, mate.” I said I didn’t need to use it, I was OK here. But he repeated his statement and said, “Don’t you talk to my missus like that.” I told him again I was entitled to use the bay and he abused me again, don’t talk to his missus like that, and walked off. Bloody hell. Upsetting.

I had a great lunch at the Sidewalk Cafe in the centre mall there. I really feel good eating there – they give me what I ask for, it is a full serve, whatever it is, and I tell them I enjoyed the meal when I pay. Unusually good these days, an exception.

Then I made the mistake of doing grocery shopping at Woolies, the first time for a couple of months. Yes, another pricing error. Another case of a markdown price not registering, and going through at the full original price. Again! I pick this up because I always sit down and go through my docket when I leave, and I always find an error at Woolies.

I think this is so prevalent (it happens every time I shop at Woolies) that it’s time I wrote a letter of complaint, cc Consumer Affairs and ABC Checkout. I’ll need to collect more dockets, but that won’t take long. I’m sick of Woolies, Woolworths overcharges, Woolworths rips you off! By contrast, I virtually never find any errors at Coles.

Postscript: another strange incident. I shopped at Coles just now and as I often do, I held a quarter full plastic bag open and said, “Fill ’em up. There’s plenty of room for the small stuff in here.”

“I’ll continue with what I’m doing, thank you”, said the lady, avoiding my eyes. Woohoo. She has her way of doing it and she ain’t going to be told. She did relent a little later and asked if I wanted to add a few small items to another bag.

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And to cap it all off yesterday, after steadily losing weight at the rate of about 0,3Kg a day for some time, I regained 1,2Kg in one hit yesterday. Damn. I’ve lost about 5Kg in the past four months, slow and steady. Just eating less because my appetite ain’t what it used to be. In fact I would say I eat less than half the amount I used to eat 5 years or more ago. I used to eat a full container, maybe even two, of Chinese food or curry, but now I get two meals from one container. And that’s all I have.

The Byetta diabetes injections I use are supposed to be a weight loser, and I know why – it makes you feel nauseous for about two hours after each injection (breakfast and dinner). It’s quite effective at suppressing appetite.

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I always get pleasure from looking through my thousands of photos from my 40 years of photography. Some samples from my Perth Shots folder:

There are one or two pics from other sources but nearly all these are mine. There are some historic shots in here. What’s going to happen to all these when I die?