The past few days have been relatively action-packed.
It began with my first day at work, which exceeded my expectations. I had mulled over the notion of calling in sick, or just pretending that my commitment didn't exist, but I decided that I had to bite the bullet and forego my cowardice. In retrospect, I think I made a reasonably good decision.

I arrived slightly early at the store and suffered an awkward wait, skulking around Lea Bridge road whilst my manager opened the door for me. I approached tentatively and was pleasantly greeted by Gary, my manager. He was, in fairness, a very nice chap. He explained health and safety procedures to me and showed me how to use the cash register (a knack that I am yet to fully master).

A few customers in and I was fairly happy that I was doing a good job. My co-workers, whilst perhaps a tad simple, were nice enough and nothing much was going wrong. I did manage to charge a woman £28.50 for a book, because the cash register lied to me, but the problem was sorted out quick enough. The day was defined by sporadic and confusing customer-related issues. Firstly, I was warned not to let gypsies in the store because they had a tendency for theft. Whilst I strongly disagreed with the wide-scale social discrimination, I dared not contradict my manager, especially as it probably wasn't worth my job and an argument over. There was a woman who profusely swore at a push-chair... that wasn't there. I would hazard a guess that she had some form of dementia, but she was quite nice to me, so I can't complain. An elderly Muslim woman in a burka bought a £1.50 pair of ear-rings. The futility of this action cannot be expressed by words. My best effort at the time was to offer a sheepish smile and thank her for her business. Later on in the day, a furiously African woman (in the sense that the extent of her ethnicity - as an African - was so strong that it verged upon violence, if that makes any sense) demanded a refund for the DVDs that she bought.  She offered a compelling background story as to her intentions when buying aforementioned DVDs, but it served little purpose as she lacked a receipt... or the DVDs. I could not help but laugh at her. On balance, I didn't regret my attendance and will continue to do so.

My next day was characterised by trip into London with Charlie and Chanel. It was in fact, a very enjoyable day out. I initially intimated that I would enjoy relaxing in Hyde Park, but Charlie has a bit of a domineering tendency to get his way, and so we visited the Natural History Museum. The exterior I found mind-blowing, with its precision carved indentations and beautifully looming spires. However, the interior I am largely familiar with, and thus found a smidgen uninteresting. We proceeded to have dinner at Pizza Hut (the paradigm of class, I know...), which made for a thoroughly entertaining evening, followed by a smooth journey home.

Between then and now, I saw the new Harry Potter film, which was an expected let-down. The audience in the cinema didn't enhance it either; cheering every few scenes for any number of reasons. I was forced to abandon my distinctly British method of gritting myself and ignoring it, rather opting for the American, "Shut the hell up, you fuckwits!". Against my better nature, yes, but it proved successful.

Yesterday I embarked upon a day of sport at the field with the usual lot. I discovered that I have a talent for baseball, denting Tadas' bat in the process, and not very much of a talent for frisbee, falling flat on my face.