60 Minutes

<< A can of Fanta Fruit Twist, due to be glugged at 8pm (superficial damage not visible)

I stayed at work until 6pm today, almost entirely for show. Having earned £6.50 looking at trainers for half an hour, I headed out of the building at 6.05pm, having first tried to text my friend to ask if he wanted to meet up after work for a drink. My battery tied on the cusp of sending, but this proved a blessing in disguise as I stepped into the daylight to find rain belting diagonally from the sky. I was attired in a thin cardigan, but fear not - I have a route to the train station that is 50% covered, involves walking virtually in a circle and is kind of my version of Parcours. I arrived on the platform as the train pulled in, and a couple of changes later I was on the bus to Tooting.

The only seat was next to a guy who had fallen asleep, and was propping his face up with the palm of his hand. I tried to move his free paper, only to find that he had hidden stuff underneath it and that he wasn't quite as asleep as I thought. I made an apologetic face that looked a bit like the woman who was in Wallace and Gromit - A Close Shave and sat next to him. He promptly returned to sleeping with one eye open. I continued reading the second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, still preoccupied by the nagging feeling that it's not quite as good as the first one, and that the boy they've brought into it is kind of irritating.

Upon arrival in Tooting, I alighted and walked to the nearest supermarket (Somerfield, since you ask - it's not Harrods but it's certainly competitive), pausing only to cough and accidently spit on the pavement - an error that I am 99% certain nobody else saw. I purchased some lemon cheesecake slices, a couple of shop-soiled cans of fizz and a large bottle of alcohol (it's not for me). The cashier looked at me funny, and I thought she was going to ask for I.D - in fact, I was hoping she would, because I actually had my passport in my bag, ready to thrust before her disbelieving eyes. Instead, I sensed that her surprise was that a person such as myself was purchasing such copious volumes of booze. I quite like the fact that people don't have me down as an alcoholic upon first glance. I then journeyed home, the sky still lashing it's payload upon the hapless residents of South London.

As I approached the front door of Knowledge Towers, I noticed that the neighbours still haven't taken their recycling bags in, and wondered if maybe they were dead for a couple of seconds. The doormat was festooned with small rectangles of card that I know are advertising courier services without looking at them. I think about the likelihood of domestic properties ever requiring a courier service. The only thing that gets couriered here are pizzas. I then prise open the packet of deliciously reduced cheesecake slices, only to find that each one is individually wrapped in cellophane. I head onto the internet with the intention of writing a bilious missive to McVities as to why exactly they feel it necessary to seal each slice in plastic, but end up doing my blog instead. I decide to give McVities a piece of my mind after the football.

Upon beginning my blog (and also concurrently trying to find the new Portishead album on a hooky Russian mp3 site, when it costs just £10 on CD in Woolworths) I decide that, as I am once again without a fact, I will just write about my hour-long journey from office to flat, in the hope of inspiration. I find none, until the fourth paragraph of the rather tedious narrative, when I pause to look up how to spell 'cellophane'. I find it on Wikipedia, and discover the following, once I have written this very build-up:

Cellophane was invented in 1908, when a Swiss inventor attempted to make a plastic coating for tablecloths.

I also discovered, between writing the build up and delivering the fresh-baked fact, that cellophane is made from viscose, which in turn is derived from cellulose, an organic compound found in cotton, celery and mari-joo-ahna, amongst other plant life. Hence why it's called cellophane. I'm still pretty sure that surrounding innocent cheesecake slices in it is still pretty unnatural though, and bad for the environment, to put it mildly. I now intend to watch a game of football I have virtually no interest in, release the rest of the slices from their plastic prisons and glug down my superficially damaged can of Fanta Fruit Twist. Another day, another dollar.