People are weird.

The other day in Oban, I was escaping taking the kids to see The Singing Kettle by doing shopping, I saw this trolley outside Lidl. Nothing particularly unusual about it apart from it's not attached to all the other trolleys in the rack by one of those coin-operated dongles. I hate these things. I hate having to pay to borrow a shopping trolley. I know it probably cuts down the number that end up in canals or people garages but I personally feel insulted that I'm not trusted to take one back without having some of my money held hostage. So, after being shown this trick by shelf-stacker at Farmfoods*, I have a key from a corned beef tin on my keyring. The fat bit (of the right sort) of a corned beef** tin key is just about almost exactly (well near enough) to the diameter of a pound coin to enable to to push it into a shopping trolley dongle and, with a twist, when you've freed it from the other trolleys, you can take it out again. When I return a trolley I never chain it back up again so that the next person who comes along doesn't have the hassle of finding a coin etc. etc.

I guess I'm not the only person who knows this trick, because outside Lidl in Oban,there was this liberated trolley just sitting there waiting for someone to go shopping with it. As I stood there trying to decide whether or not to go to Homebase first, a bloke walked up to this particular trolley, stopped and looked at it. (I was standing far enough away for it to be obvious this was in no way MY trolley). He looked at it very closely. Bent over and peered at it. He worked out that it wasn't attached to the other trolleys. He hesitated - then he moved away, took a coin out of his pocket, and freed another trolley and trundled it into the shop.

Why?

No idea. I went to Homebase. When I came back to Lidl half an hour later the trolley was still there. I took the trolley. It was a fine trolley. Nothing wrong with it at all. Walking around the shop I estimated from the number of people in there just starting their shopping that at least half a dozen people must have bypassed it and dug money out of their pockets to get a chained up, unsuspicious trolley of their own.

People are weird.

* I shop in all the best places.
** Or 'Corn beefed' as I originally typed.