Up at 6am, pick Briaan up at 7.15 and we are at the Cash and Carry, which coincidentally isn’t where we thought it was, by 8am. I walk in through the sliding doors brandishing g39’s Cash and Carry members card. I am expecting all types of things to go wrong, even sensors to go off. Large hooded security guards will take Briaan and I into a small room after our fingerprints don’t match Chris and Anthony’s. There will be two cops. Both of them will be bad. Five minutes into the interrogation Briaan will squeal that I once had a Mohican or some other criminal misdemeanour that I am less than proud of and I will be locked up in the Cash and Carry’s underground cell.
Cerbyd will go ahead without me but there will be a horrific accident and only Briaan will survive to tell me the harrowing tale. Of course, I am over anxious and none of this will happen. Probably.
We swing around the aisles filling our two industrial trolleys to the brim. There is plenty of carbohydrates on offer and that means energy for doing Cerbyd stuff. As we head towards the fresh veg section, I start to worry. I can see only bags of onions. Big bloody bags of onions but sod all else. Cold sweat and panic sets in. I know Briaan doesn’t eat vegetables apart from when I forced him so I could make a film called Briaan doesn’t about 7 years ago. He shrugs his shoulders as if said big bag of onions is substantial enough on the veg front for an eight day camping trip.
We step through what I hope is an Aladdin’s cave chiller area that will contain one of the finest selections of vegetables known to man. It doesn’t. There are spring onions, peppers and a lot of yogurt. It is 9.50am the bus is ready to be picked up for 11.30am. We need to pack the bus and collect the artists at 1pm. There is no time for this. I have never eaten tinned mushrooms or come to think of it any tinned vegetable apart from sweetcorn. Call me a snob but I just haven’t. We grabbed a variety of vegetables in tins and pushed our way toward the checkout. We needn’t have rushed.
The Cash and Carry checkouts have not taken the lead from the express tills of local supermarkets. Our two industrial trolleys full with at least 250 items generates no response from our hapless bar code scanner man. He is bored out of his mind. I don’t blame him I just need to go and buy some vegetables. Real vegetables so our meals don’t taste of brine. Is that so much to ask for?
It seems one of our purchases doesn’t have a barcode. This means 25 minutes of waiting at the checkout and my paranoia is back. I am convinced they have realised we are not the g39 boys and have sent for the cavalry. For those of you who have not visited a Cash and Carry the procedure is that you pay for your goods then take your receipt to a cashier set back from you in a wall behind bullet-proof glass. Cerbyd’s receipt reaches down and tickles the floor.
The shop assistant returns with the missing barcoded iteam. We rejoice. I hand g39’s card and Cerbyd’s receipt to a smart and smiling man in a suit. He reiterates the amount of our bill and I pay with Cerbyd’s card. The addresses on Cerbyd’s card and g39’s card do not match.
Now if I were the man behind the bullet-proof glass, I would be depressing the red button which would in turn be alerting the necessary authorities of our fraudulent status as owners of g39. The smart and smiling man does none of this instead he asks me whether Pentyrch (where my card is registered to) is near Castell Coch. I reply ‘yes’ and he informs me that Castell Coch is his favourite castle in all of Wales. It is mine too. Brian and I split from this Cash and Carry and we get the hell out of dodge.
