Checkout Number 4 …

After retiring from my ICT Consultancy role I took on a Christmas temporary job with Marks and Spencers, Simply Food in Huddersfield.  The role was quite varied, including stock control and customer service on the checkouts.

In 2013, with the store having three express checkouts, the first conventional customer checkout was checkout number four. Routinely therefore a manned and busy checkout.

However on a dreary winter’s evening that was really cold and raining heavily I found myself sat lonely at checkout number 4 with barely a customer in the store.  Earlier in the evening my last two customers had bought ready meals for one, in one case a very tempting Cottage Pie.

I had been chatting about the inspiration for original songs with fellow M&S temporary colleague, Louis Jones of ‘The Spectrals‘ duo (who went on to join ‘The Ordinary Boys’ as lead guitarist).

So with that influence, those two customers, and another regular that I often interacted with, became unwitting characters in,  and inspiration for, this slightly tongue-in-cheek song.  Partly written that very evening, at the deserted checkout, scrawled onto a scrap piece of paper!

When shopping beware musicians and writers, as you may end up with a cameo in their works!