Credit where it is due

My children will tell you that I can be the archetypal "Grumpy old man", and that is true, but I do like to give credit where it is due. In Wednesday's issue of the Independent there were listed the ten best Fairtrade wines. The accolade of Best White went to a South African Chardonnay from Marks and Spencer, so yesterday my beloved and I went to see if they had any in the Solihull store. We spoke to a nice lady, named Dawn, but we could not remember the name of the wine. She suggested we go home, and having found the name, ring to see if and when they would have some in. Today I went back armed with the name of the wine, but could see none on the shelves. I was approached by the store manager who was walking round with a colleague from his management team. He asked if I had found what I was looking for, so I explained the search. He promptly went off and phoned his food and drink manager and neither of them had heard of the wine. "This is typical" he explained, "Head office get some publicity which generates demand, but we don't have the product in stock". I explained it was ever thus. He took my name, telephone number and details of the wine and promised to get back to me. Forty minutes later, a lady phoned from the store to explain that two cases will be delivered on Tuesday and they will save one for us. Now that's what I call service.

Following on from yesterday's post, Chris's PC emerged from his bedroom to be examined and after a lot of farting around on my part, I managed to get it going again. In the process, I discovered how old and disk bound it is, so I'll be suggesting he wanders into John Lewis to look at the laptops in there. The little Samsung Q45 really caught my eye.