Category: Jolly Good

Avatar Jolly Good: everybody likes a Creme Egg

I said I’d bring you good news in these dark times and I jolly well will. The “jolly good” series continues with a tale of more free food.

It wasn’t a good easter for supermarkets and other food retailers. Near where I work, the food hall of a big department store remained open throughout the present mess, because it sold essential groceries, but as it wasn’t being visited by tourists and families any more, and as its customers were mainly just trying to buy food to help them survive, they didn’t sell all the chocolate they’d ordered in.

Now, if you go there, they are literally giving away chocolate at the exit, in an effort to shift it before it goes off.

Today, one of my colleagues headed out from work, explained that my department are all still working in central London, and that we’d be happy to help out with their problem. The food hall’s delighted manager couldn’t load him up with free chocolates fast enough.

We now have this.

The “this” in question is, at a rough estimate, more than 500 Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, plus a random assortment of whatever other Easter eggs and other things were lying around the storeroom.

I have eaten several Creme Eggs today, and I feel a bit sick. But in a good way.

Avatar Jolly Good: free gingerbread

In these trying times, we’re all hearing more than enough that worries, frightens or discombobulates us. To ease your worries, calm your nerves and recombobulate your addled mind, I’ve decided to make a regular habit of posting good news.

Here’s the first hit of happy headlines. Strap in.

I was in Greggs this morning to get some breakfast, having spent the night away from home. After I placed my order, the barista (being from London I assume the people behind the counter are baristas, like in Cafe Nero) asked me “do you like gingerbread?”

That’s not a difficult question. “I do”, I replied.

He put a gingerbread man in a little bag and put it on the counter with my order. “Here you go,” he said. “That’s free.”

When I asked about this gingerbread generosity, he explained that head office had – for no reason he could see – sent him about 200 extra gingerbread men and he’d never be able to sell them all. So he was just handing them out to anyone who wanted one.

Admittedly my free gingerbread man has distressingly fat legs, and has been given icing and smarties in a particularly slapdash way, almost as though the person adding his buttons had 200 of them to do and thought they might all end up in the bin, but all in all this is an absolute win. Hurrah!