Difficulties

My mother wonders why I keep things like 30 year old hand held eggbeaters in storage. Here's why... I've been trying to hunt down an eggbeater for days now - to make a chocolate mousse. Which is, as an aside, one of the first things I learned to make, and was certainly the stuff of legend back in high school if I do modestly say so myself.
So, back to the batteur…After a 3 day succession of shops being closed, shops not stocking the eggbeater attachment for my hand mixer - and requiring a week delay and several forms to order said attachment,shops not stocking old fashioned hand powered ones either, frustrated stomping round the streets of the banlieu...one of those ‘my god this simple task is turning into a Homerian epic’ reached its climax of utter stupidity yesterday.

Finally I found one in a large supermarket, after walking for over 3km checking every plausible shop on the way, picked up a made in China piece of junk practically weeping with relief, and made my way to the checkout. Where it was rung up for a grand total of 28 euros. And herein began the long process of finding someone sensible to do something about it. To cut a long and tediously boring story short, the matter was resolved without the need for me to resort to physical violence, but what really struck me about this little humdrum misadventure was, that of the 7 (SEVEN!) or so people that I had to speak with to get what was clearly a simple pricing error sorted out, half of them tried to convince me that this WAS the actual price. 28 euros. For a junk quality hand powered eggbeater. When electric eggbeaters sold for 23 euros. Because thinking outside the square to ‘there has been a mistake’ was such a great mental leap.

This story in itself is as tedious and urbane as hell, I appreciate that. But sometimes it can be interesting to dissect even the most inconsequential events of daily life, it can tell you a lot about the ingrained attitudes and behaviours of ordinary folk.