Medieval 'artists'

The day when you have to pay off your rent is a terrible day. I haven’t even lived in my house for next year yet, and already have had to dish out £909 for it. Yesterday I had to suffer this excruciating loss to my bank account, and so how better to cheer me up than a cheeky mystery shop!

My visit was based in the swanky Clarence Docks area of Leeds. Beautifully renovated for all the posh people to live, shop and socialise. I bought a hefty amount of sushi and ate it lovingly by the canal. I was surprised I finished it due to the fact that I had already eaten an entire BHS breakfast just an hour before. (8 bloody items!!)

So, feeling rather bloated in the Leeds sunshine, I waddled on down to the Royal Armouries museum. Free entry to see a load of guns and weapons and shit? Yes please!

Having nursed my belly through the world wars, oriental imperialism and civil war exhibitions, I finally got to the medieval stuff. I have to say, they wore a hell of a lot of armour. It must have weighed a ton! Helmets, chained tunics, breastplates, shin guards, crotch boxes (maybe not) were all on display.

The medieval weaponry was also fairly cool. Swords and shields built in varying sizes but basic shapes told me that these guys knew how to manufacture stuff that was affective in battle and easy to use.

Unfortunately, the art scene at the time of the medieval period was clearly not up to the same standard. The picture above shows a delightful scene of a French siege, in which the battling forces are protected by what looks like metal tortoise shells. Now, this is either a fantastic representation of how the French used Troy-like customs to disguise themselves as giant souvenir tortoises to gain entry to the city, or medieval artists were simply shite at realism painting.

I reckon it was the latter. The people in the buildings are smiling, and one of the tortoises has his head on the side of his shell. The geezer who painted this really captured the emotional torment and physical struggle or war-torn France.

I left the museum wondering how on earth society had managed to represent itself so beautifully in the Greek and Roman times through art and architecture, only for it to degrade to a level of childish scribblings in the medieval period. What was wrong with those guys?

This question troubled me up until I had to pay my rent. A bigger annoyance (surprisingly worth £909) then took over.

The bike: the easiest way to the moral high ground

Well it’s been a while but I finally managed to get out on a mystery shop the other day, to the beautiful town of Rochdale.

This was a ‘spur of the moment’ visit that was assigned to me about 40 minutes before I was on my bike and heading into Huddersfield town centre. I was to make minimal profit, buy purely alcohol that I had little intention on drinking, and generally bike myself into a hayfever-filled daze.

So, a delightful June day was in full swing as I peddled along the side of the road towards Huddersfield. And if there is one piece of advice I can give about cycling into town, is that you have to keep aware. Car drivers are mentalists and have absolutely no recognition towards the safety of a cyclist, something that I discovered almost to my detriment as a cool, super groovy sports car sped past me, destabilising me due to the vacuum it left behind, and subsequently had to screech the breaks in order to slow for the speed cameras.

Actually, on speed cameras, I’m fairly sure I did over 30mph as I cruised down into town. I was overtaking cars as we went though the speed traps, so surely that means I was going over 30? I didn’t get flashed though, which was a disappointment.

Eventually I got the train and ended up in Victoria station, Manchester. There, something happened that semi restores faith in our policing system. Two Manchester scallies (not to delve into stereotype at all here) hadn’t paid their train fares, and had no way of doing so (naughty). So, some spectacle-adorned policeman came down with his big hat and fluorescent jacket and closed down the train so he could fine them. We were all stood on the platform looking in, having a right good snigger about it all.

I gladly showed my ticket to the inspector as I boarded the train, and within a few minutes was on a little platform somewhere near Rochdale. At this point I’d like to add that it was Rochdale that I wanted to go to, not Rotherham. Unfortunately, the ticket man at Huddersfield station didn’t realise this until he’d printed out the south Yorkshire tickets. I almost missed my train due to such incompetence!

So, biking around Rochdale. There is really nothing much to comment on. There are roads, and more roads, and massive junctions that connect roads and that are a right pain in the saddle for a cyclist to conquer.

There is something good in Rochdale however, and that’s the accent. A hard, proud accent straight from t’ factories. A real accent that immediately gives you a sense of place in the barren Lancashire Pennines. An accent that is far more understandable than the Kentish crap I had to put up with a week before.

The visit went well. I got lots of alcohol (still not drunk) and two pints of milk (drunk before I even got home). The way back was a bit of an eye opener though. There was an old man, who I’m not sure if he was drunk, mentally challenged, or simply very boisterous, who was talking to the other strangers on the train. He saw my bike, grinned inanely, and began a 20-minute one-way conversation about how youngsters like me should do more cycling and train riding than driving cars. I was a saint apparently, and I of course happily lapped up the morality of it all, agreeing with whatever he said. He addressed the problems of engine pollution on today’s streets, which, as he put is ever so perfectly, ‘Changes someone who is green, like you [he point’s to me], into someone who is black with sot and smog’.

I liked that analogy, shook the old codger’s hand, and quite briskly left the carriage at Victoria.

Repetition

Well sadly it now seems that I’m going full circle when it comes to mystery shops. Yesterday I visited a store for the second time, and today I visited two stores that I have both visited twice before.

It’s got to the stage where I’m starting to recognise changes at each shop. The supermarket in Clarence Docks now has bike-parking facilities, whilst the snacks section of the store by the river has moved to the sidewall. Amazing isn’t it!

I’ve clearly been doing this for too long now. It’s been about eight months since my first ever visit in Huddersfield, and from looking at my map I’ve travelled a fair bit. I suppose it is a little sad when you start noting down the changes of your repeated visits.

Sweltering heat and one young fool

After a week of sitting around doing less than what those who live on the dole do all day; e.g. nothing, a double shop finally came around. Today, it was a trip to a place I’d already been, and a lovely new shop to get my teeth into.

The day started well. I woke at 10, got ready at 11, and finally got my arse out of the flat by 12noon. What a glorious day to be out! Intense heat and little wind do wonders for pollution levels on the roads, and I certainly got a mouthful of that notion as I biked up to Headingley to start my ‘journey’.

The trip eventually took me to place I had visited a few months ago. Back then - oh it seems like only yesterday - there were road signs warning people of overhead cables. Now, however, the signs were gone – hurray! – but the cables weren’t. So, if the signs aren’t there now then it surely was pointless them being there to begin with, as the ‘hazard’ is still there!

Well as my blood curdled with rage and fury I rode on by and completed my first supermarket visit of the day. I was in the middle of Chapel Allerton, a place not exactly reputable for low crime records, so I decided not to hang around for too long – after all my bike is worth around 40p – and scoot to the next shop.

By the time I got to Easterly Road (which is somewhere in Leeds but I haven’t really got a clue) I was roasting. I can imagine between shop visits I lost about 7 lbs in water alone. I had to peel the helmet from my scalp and pant into the store.

To be honest I was feeling a little sorry for myself: out in the middle of nowhere with a bike and ipod for company and very, very moist. Luckily, a young lad made me feel glad to be me (although I do feel old saying that). The young ‘un was stood next to me trying to get served for ‘an alcoholic beverage’ of which I shall not name - free advertising? No chance!

He was wearing huge shades and had a weasely little moustache that made him look like a fruit fly, although clearly he hoped it made him look rugged, weather-beaten and over-age. The man behind the till wasn’t and idiot, and wouldn’t serve him.

I was amazed by the boy’s annoyance at this, as though he thought the disguise of two satellite dishes and a coal smudge slapped to his face was bound to work! He moped out of the shop, and as I biked past him later on, saw him waking away with three other pre-pubescent toddlers, bless.

Well, that was my trip around northeast Leeds. I overheated, almost drowned in my own perspiration, saw the worst attempt ever at getting served, and found that road signs are as useless when there are there as when they aren’t. Lovely.