Miscellaneous bloggery

Some shorter stories, that didn't deserve a post of their own, but nevertheless seemed interesting enough to find some sort of existence on here...

I went to a Caribbean restaurant, where I was slipped a Jamaican $20 coin in change rather than a pound coin. They're pretty similar size and weight, but the dollar is worth £0.009, so I lost 98.2 pence in the transaction. Except that I then left the coin in a bar (I couldn't bring myself to use it to pay for a drink) so I actually lost the whole pound.

I watched two gentlemen (slightly the worse for drink, it appeared) at a bus stop arguing over whether they had time to go and get some food from a newsagents before the bus arrived. One of them crossed the road and entered the shop, but shortly re-emerged, revealing that his wallet was with his comrade at the stop. Said comrade found the wallet, and rather than cross the road, decided to throw it across to his friend, allowing them both to watch as the clasp came undone in mid air, scattering the entire contents of the wallet across three lanes of traffic. I believe they may have missed their bus while trying to locate all the constituent items.

A while back I got some actual physical spam. It's really rather exciting. I don't think I'll be sending my details to the "El Gordo Spanish Sweepstake" despite the fact that I have apparently won 615,810 euros, but it's nice to see that even in the internet age, some people are committed to badly-printed, cheaply-produced mailshots as well. Thank you, Diego Lupe, vice president of El Gordo, for making my day a little brighter, with your distressingly obvious scam.
I can't remember from whence it came, possibly with some mail-order train tickets, but I also recently received some free samples of chewing gum in the post. It may just be me, but the idea of receiving unsolicited foodstuffs in the post seems somewhat creepy, and needless to say, I will not be eating them anytime soon. If anything, it's slightly put me off buying trident gum in the future, which is pretty much the worst thing an advertising campaign can do.
Ordering a drink in a pub + being served the wrong one + asking for it to be replaced + watching the ice from the old drink being carefully returned to the ice bucket, piece by piece = a certain unwillingness to return to the pub in question.

I may need to cut my hair, or regrow my beard, having entered a restaurant with a female friend, only to be greeted by the waiter as "Ladies!".

Does anyone have any idea how Pret A Manger can authorise bank card transactions without needing a PIN or a signature? According to them, they do it to save time, but it seems massively insecure.