12 DEC 09

Saturday: The last full day of blagging.

I caught the train into London. The teenager next to me looked as if she was ready to stab/shoot/eat the next person who dared to look at her, so I refrained from divulging my new life-story, which is a shame as I’d just got a job as a trapeze artist in a travelling circus.

A group of school friends were waiting outside Pizza Hut on Oxford Street. It was a birthday, and having most definitely seen candles in a fudge cake at such an establishment before, it was time for a mild blag. I sneaked off to ‘the toilet’ and tracked down our waitress. She informed me that they had no candles and no lighter but gave me directions to the nearest supermarket. Dejected, but still hoping to make the birthday meal at least a little special, I ran off to the shop and managed to get back with candles and party hats before the drinks had arrived. It turns out that this wasn’t a huge achievement as the service was so unbelievably slow that I could have easily walked to the River Thames with a bucket, designed, built and operated my own water filtration system in the time it took to get a drink. It inexplicably took three hours to order and eat lunch but at least, I thought, there would be candles on the fudge cake.

A sorry lump of dessert did eventually arrive, with one measly, pathetic candle carelessly placed off-centre at a peculiar angle. Less than impressed, I asked if we could have the rest of the candles back, to which I was informed that the rest had been thrown away. Pizza Hut blagged my candles! I took comfort in the fact that I could potentially write and complain in the hopes of getting free pizza next time.
The afternoon was spent looking for blagging opportunities, which don’t present themselves readily on a Saturday afternoon in central London on the lead-up to Christmas, and utterly defeated I waited for the Megabus at Victoria Coach Station. The prospect of a three hour coach journey back to Cardiff tempted me into Subway and I ordered the £1.99 six inch ham ‘Sub of the Day’.
“Foot long chicken and bacon with drink, yes?” the man confirmed.
I repeated that I’d just like the Sub of the Day, if that was alright. The man nodded and prepared my order; I waved my arm in the general direction of the vegetable collection and wearily wondered what on Earth I was going to write about for this blagging article. I reached the till and found myself faced with a foot long chicken and bacon meal which consumed every last penny of loose change in my possession. I spent the coach journey pondering my lack of blagging abilities in silence.