A tense stand-off, leading to victory!

Quite why the cashier didn't put the card in my hand, or why he didn't call me back to receive it, I don't know, but anyhow I am a fine one to accuse him of being negligent or careless.

It was me who walked off blithely without my bank card, after all.

I noticed the thing was missing from my wallet when I got to my place of work. I traced back through what I'd done over the preceding two hours. I worked out I must have dozily left the card at the check-out.

So after an hour or so doing urgent work, I drove back to the supermarket to (hopefully) reclaim the card.

First, I had to queue at 'Customer Services' behind a couple having a lengthy kerfuffle over a Marco Pierre White microwave oven they'd bought there. I felt like advising them never to buy anything bearing the name of some wally off the telly, but thought better of it.

The receptionist, when I got to speak to her, told me 'yes' my card was there. It had been handed in.

"Could I have it back then?" I asked.

Dear me, no, nothing so simple could happen without me providing ID of the sort and in the quantity that an asylum seeker might need to get safely ashore at Dover.

Now I had a letter bearing my home address with me, but not a driving licence or anything official with my photo on it. Apparently, that meant I could be absolutely anybody and I might be trying to steal the bank card.

I recognised the 'Customer Services' harridan from an encounter a few weeks earlier when I 'd complained to her that Sainsbury's keeps moving its various shelves around - so you never know where to find, for examples, sandwiches, or booze, from one week to the next.

I remember my complaint on that occasion was gracelessly dismissed - and that very same haughty, indifferent air was shown to me as I tried to reclaim the bank card that belonged, most definitely, to me.

Could Sir possibly come back tomorrow, bearing the required ID documentation?

No Sir could not! That would be highly inconvenient. And I know what dens of carelessness supermarkets are. I wouldn't trust them to still have my card safely stored by the following day.

Besides which ... I am a Free Man in a Free Country. I do not routinely carry around ID.

And I do not like big branches of retail capitalism making the assumption that I'm not telling the truth: that I would try to steal someone's bank card by impersonating them. What the hell has happened to trust in our country?

But all I got was the company line. There were "rules and procedures" to be followed. Sir.

This is the attitude that the Nazi death camp guards used to come out with. "Only following rules..."

Whenever I hear that, or similar jobsworth boll****, a joyously defiant line from a Billy Bragg song always comes in to my head ... "Your laws do not apply to me!"

So I asked to see a manager. One was duly produced, a most unprepossessing little fellow. He just trotted out the company line too - and refused to hand over my bank card that was tantalisingly close at hand, in a cupboard at the 'Customer Services' desk.

I frustration, I said to him: "Surely there must be somebody more important than you I can talk to." I know, that wasn't very nice of me, but he was, as I say, unprepossessing in appearance.

So a more senior manager came to see me, and at last he saw sense; saw that I wasn't some scally trying a bank card scam. That I was just an 'Ordinary Joe' who'd had a crap day and so become too distracted to collect his bank card at a supermarket till.

Well, perhaps not exactly an 'Ordinary Joe', for in my attempts to persuade him I was who I claimed to be I produced a card bearing my image (the rather daft image featured at the top of this blog, taken in a dodgy bar in Krakow three years ago, if you must know).

That card was the one I use as a performance poet - and the senior manager smiled indulgently. It is, apparently, quite believable that a scatter-brained poet should forget to collect his bank card. He handed it back to me with considerable grace and charm.

Talking of poetry, the Bards of New Brighton open-mic takes place as usual on the second Monday of the month (8 February) at the Magazine pub in Magazine Brow, New Brighton, CH45 1HP, starting 8pm.

And our new performance poetry club for Liverpool, theme@LIVERpoetry will have its next open-mic night at the upstairs room of the Pilgrim pub, Pilgrim Street L1 9HB, on Wednesday 10 February, starting 8pm. The theme for the night is ... love.

Both events are great fun and admission is free.
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