It’s a Tuesday night and my husband and I don’t feel like cooking, so we order fish and chips for delivery from a local place via a well-known app. We pay on the app as normal and get a delivery estimate for around an hour’s time.

About fifteen minutes before our delivery estimate, a car pulls up and a delivery driver with a bag of food knocks on our door, hands my husband the bag, and asks for cash payment.

Husband: “But… we paid on the app.”

There have been some power cuts in the local area. Our house has been mostly unaffected, apart from some flickering lights but social media has been awash with people complaining of having no power at all, so it doesn’t seem unusual when the delivery driver explains.

Driver: “Actually, the app’s payment system is down because of the power cuts, so you’ll have to pay in cash. But don’t worry; in the event that you are double-charged, you can simply come down to the shop and we’ll refund us the cash.”

He even hands us the delivery note with our order details and the price to pay so we’ll have something in the way of evidence if we need it. It doesn’t occur to us to check the items on the receipt, as the price sounds about right, so we pay the cash and take the food inside, looking forward to our cheeky mid-week treat.

As we begin to unpack the food, it becomes clear that this isn’t our order. Not even close. My husband jumps straight on the phone with the restaurant to explain that our order must have been mixed up and we’ve received someone else’s food. I only hear one side of the conversation, but it’s clear that there’s a lot of confusion while the restaurant and my husband try to figure out what’s gone wrong and where our food is.

It’s then that I start looking at the food we’ve received, along with the bill the delivery driver handed us, and I’m pretty sure some of this food isn’t even on the menu of the place we ordered from. From what I can glean from my husband’s side of the phone conversation, it sounds like they haven’t even sent our order yet so the restaurant can’t understand what food we’ve received.

I start looking through the bags and the receipt to find anything that confirms the name of the restaurant this food has come from, but there is nothing. I whisper my suspicions to my husband, but he seems to have reached the same conclusion as me; this food hasn’t come from the place we’ve actually ordered from. He makes his apologies and hangs up with the restaurant.

It then dawns on us that we’ve been victims of the strangest series of coincidences we’ve ever experienced: on a day and time when we so happen to be expecting a food delivery, a completely separate fish and chip shop mistakenly writes our address on a food order made by someone else, where the bill came to roughly the same amount as what we’d ordered, at a time when there was a plausible explanation as to why online payments were failing.

Our actual takeaway arrived around twenty minutes later — exactly as we’d ordered it — and we ate it in confusion surrounded by food that we didn’t order, and didn’t want, but had still somehow paid for, with no way of knowing where it had come from so we could ask for our money back!

We tried for a while cross-checking the items on the receipt with other restaurants on the app but couldn’t find anywhere with the same menu items at the same prices as what we’d received ,and the few plausible restaurants that we called up denied any such order. Reaching out to the app’s customer service was futile, too, since we’d paid in cash, had no order number, and couldn’t even tell them what restaurant had sent the food! We’ve since written off the extra money we spent on our second, unwanted takeaway that night, but at least we’ve got a great, albeit confusing, story to tell!

In the UK, “high-caffeine energy drinks” cannot be sold to under 16s. I use the automated checkout with my age-restricted drink, though there is always a member of staff by the eight or so automated checkouts to deal with issues and glitches. Taking this drink through them has never been an issue before, and I don’t really want to queue for a manned checkout for a few items.

I scan my shopping and wait as the light is flashing red and the screen is telling me that age verification is needed.

A minute or so goes by, and the person usually there is nowhere to be seen. I look over to the closest manned checkout, which now has no queue.

Cashier #1: “Sorry, can’t help you, love. Have to stay here.”

Another minute later, I wave at the cashier.

Cashier #1: “Look, just wait. It’s only been a few minutes.”

Cashier #2: *Walking past* “Oh, sorry. Not sure who is supposed to be here. I’ll see if I can find someone. What’s the issue? [Drink]? Yeah, I’ll get someone to come over.”

Me: “Can’t you verify it? I have ID if you need to see that.”

That’s normally not needed; they take one look at me and swipe an employee code of some kind, and the machine knows I’m old enough. I’m twenty-five.

Cashier #2: “Nah, sorry, gotta find who it’s supposed to be.”

She ambles off slowly.

I wait another minute or so and then give up. I would have given up sooner, but it is pouring with rain so I don’t mind waiting inside in the hope that the rain will ease off a bit. But now, it’s taken two people over five minutes to do nothing, one of whom hasn’t served anyone else in that time.

As I leave, abandoning my four or five items at the checkout, I hear [Cashier #1].

Cashier #1: “Bloody cheek. Leaving it for someone else to deal with now she doesn’t want it, I suppose.”

Me: “I do want it, but I can’t pay because of the [Drink], and I can’t cancel the drink because that requires a member of staff, too, and there isn’t anybody there.”

Cashier #1: “So that’s my fault, is it? That you’re too lazy to stand still and wait?”

I just walked out.

As I looked back, I saw [Cashier #1] get up and cancel my items with the employee swipe code, so she could have done that the whole time. I’ve not been back since.

I’m outside the front of my house pruning some of the plants. It’s a bit of a job, although it is a tiny bit of land; reaching the back is impossible.

I’m sweeping up the clippings when a man I’ve never seen before approaches me.

Man: “You can do mine next, if you like?”

I laugh as I think he’s joking, but his expression tells me otherwise.

Me: “Oh, you’re serious. No, sorry, mate. I don’t do this for a living.”

Man: “You have all the tools and I don’t. Come on! Be neighbourly.”

Me: “I don’t know you, ‘neighbour,’ and these tools are cheap enough. Go buy your own.”

Man: “Don’t be a d**k! Come on, or let me borrow them.”

He reaches for the shears in my hand. I pull them away from him.

Me: “Get lost.”

Man: “Whatever, I’ll just come back and take them.”

Thankfully, I have a video doorbell that he was standing right in front of. I passed the video on to the police and they said they would investigate. I never heard from or saw the man again.

We nearly didn’t buy our current house. It had sat on the market for months as it was majorly overpriced. It needed some work, and it didn’t help that the owners had made very personal touches in decor.

We viewed it and the owner gave the tour, harping on about how “exclusive” her horrible kitchen was and how she was remiss, leaving the “dated and chipped” bathroom tiles. She rationalised every neon colour, as if it was the rate museum.

We made a reasonable offer and it was declined. We made another offer. It was declined.

Me: “I’m happy to just walk away from this one.

Wife: “I think we could make our money back in the restoration.”

We talked it over and I agreed, so we made an asking price offer (subject to survey).

This was eventually accepted and I instructed the survey. What I was not expecting was a major list of issues to come back with structural problems.

We talked to the agent and they talked to the owner, who was suspiciously not shocked by this major news. The agent apologised massively and asked if we wanted to withdraw the offer.

What both of them didn’t realize was that we planned to remove all of the problem wall and windows in the renovation, so we made a new offer, lower than the first. It was accepted, and within the first three months of living there, we extended and brought the house back up to standard.

During the lockdown, many of us in our area put out old toys, books, games, etc., in front of the house for free. It makes for a nice community spirit and it’s a good way to de-clutter.

I have just taken in the empty box after the second load of items was taken, and I hear a knock on the door. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had done so to thank us; once, a small child wanted to give us a gift in return.

I open the door to see a woman in her late thirties, on her phone with a hand on her hips and a face full of attitude.

My sense of community spirit is draining fast as I can feel where this is going.

Woman: “You had a book out front; where is it?”

Me: “I put lots of books outside. I imagine someone took it.”

Woman: “My son needs it.”

Me: “That’s a shame. Someone else took it.”

Woman: *Sighs dramatically* “You aren’t worth the time.”

She strutted off. I decided to leave it a day or two before gifting more items, as I couldn’t believe the entitlement of some people.