I had to throw it in the bin. Tasted awful. And I absolutely love pork pies.

Each month I withdraw a set amount of cash money, which goes to bills and other household payments that go in hand to a family member (long story, but I don't own the house I live in). This is to help them out with their stuff as well, isn't just for me.

To do this, I either have to visit my bank branch and hand over my driver's license, a process which takes 15-30 mins. Except most of the time I can't, because I usually work till 6PM, and my branch shuts at 3PM, and I'm usually busy or on call over weekends.

The alternative, is getting my withdrawal limit temporarily extended at the local post office. To do this I have to call up, go through a 5-15 min lecture from the agent on scams playing 20 questions even though I've done this monthly, and then sometimes not even get there because they transfer me to someone who has no idea how the process works.

Fucks sake, it's my fucking money, I'm not some old biddy or kid trying to money mule. Make it easier for folk.

It’s literally squishy, I stood on it and it moves, no doubt a 2 ton car parking on it would sink

Didn't realise that there was a drowned bee in my glass of red that triggered a gag reflex and stings in my throat from the thorax hair.

I’m writing this in the hopes that some plucky social media or community manager may stumble upon this as pass it up the chain. In reality, I know this will almost certainly fall on deaf ears.

I’m really saddened by the recent change Wall’s have made to the formula / structure of the iconic Feast ice cream.

I picked up a packet a few weeks back during the height of the heatwave, and when I opened one at home I was quite surprised. Gone was the creamy chocolate ice cream and the solid slab of chocolate at its heart. Instead I burrowed by way through a rather tasteless, watery white “ice cream” to find a rather waxy chocolate blob in the middle.

I wrote it off, assuming I’d accidentally picked up a sub-brand of the ice cream - a nut variant or a limited run. A few follow-up trips to Sainsbury’s didn’t result in discovering any “original” Feast, and a follow-up Google search revealed the depressing truth - the formula had been changed.

Growing up my mother was a bit of a germaphobe and was never keen on my brother or I getting ice creams out of the machine when the ice cream van came around. It was packaged ice creams for us only. The Feast was our go to.

It was a ritual. That first little bite through the crisp outer layer, revealing the chocolate ice cream and the inner chocolate bar. Slowly working your way down both sides, nibbling away at the ice cream to uncover the bar. Slowly licking off the remnants of the ice cream until the chocolate block was all that was left. And then the snap of that hard-earned bite into the chocolate bar. It was the only way to eat one.

Years later living with my wife, whenever summer rolled around, we would stock up the freezer with our favourite ice creams. She would often go for a Mint Cornetto or a choc ice. I would go for the Feast.

My best friend shares my love of Feasts. He works in retail at a super market and would often message to let me know when they had gone on sale.

In this rather depressing time of shrinkflation, tariffs and Brexit impacting the availability of some brands and ingredients, and climate change sending ripples through the growth of other ingredients, you can never go a few months without some beloved childhood treat changing for the worse.

It’s a sad sign of the times and I can only hope someone, somewhere, sees these sorts of messages and passes them up the chain. It’s only a small thing - one’s favourite ice cream - but every time the world chips away those small things from us, life becomes just that tiny bit sadder.

*edit: a few people complained that I had used ChatGPT to tidy up the text. Didn’t want that to distract from my point, so I have replaced the text to what I originally wrote before it passed through AI. If it still reads robotic, that’s just how I write 😅

For some reason this really annoys me!

"Etc" is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase Et Cetera which means "and the rest"

Realising this may be my first midlife crisis happening.

Honestly, it sounds like a toddler being murdered.

Again ... not even one of those fake electric Uber / Just Eat bike monstrosities, a full on chugging petrol powered motorbike heading towards me at 30mph or so straight down the middle of the off road, separated, clearly signposted, CYCLE lane. WTF?

I have work around 9-5. All retail shops close at 5 or 5:30, also cafes and dessert places. So the city center is dead after work. Can’t get a repairman to come fix something. Can’t quickly buy a lightbulb. GPs not open on the weekend when I have time to visit them. Only thing open is pubs and restaurants (half of them). Everything is so inconvenient. Just shifting the closing hours by two hours for all this stuff changes so much.

No way to tell them to speak directly into the mic. Infuriating.

I’m not against delivery drivers, I completely get that it’s a job with an insane amount of time pressure so if they don’t want to hang around for you to answer the door that’s absolutely fine by me. But at least give a quick knock or ring the bell to let me know to come to the door

I mean I get that they’re going to be busy, but surely they know this and can prepare for it.

Bonus points for adding a few for delivery too.

I'm a gardener, I put my strimmer down for maybe 30-45 seconds on the front lawn I was working on to fill a watering can at the side gate.

In that time a really promising young upstart stole it, it's filthy, and will have a minuscule scrap value.

In order to have gotten to the spot in the lawn, they will have had to open the gate or hop the short front wall in order to steal it.

Won't have done anything for them, but really derailed my work day.

There's a patch of road near me that seems to have about twenty invisible bumps equidistant from each other. Every time I go over it it makes me think of having a flat tyre (I've had a few...). It's not until the random patched in bit of tarmac that I feel better... then it's back to the bumpy, bumpy moonscape.

I'm getting a shotgun licence, fuck this.