After work, I decided to stop off at the 24hr Tesco store in Corstorphine as I realised that I had nothing for breakfast in the morning. Tesco at nighttime is always fun, always some interesting characters, and more annoyingly abandoned trolleys.

Abandoned trolleys really get on my nerves, because the roll around and bash your car. Grr. Anyway, I came out of Tesco (after failing to find a wee bottle of evian – grr) and there in front of the car next to Cassie was a shopping trolley. And it even had some litter in it – a half eaten sandwich and an empty carton of juice. Not only was the trolley in the way of both cars, it was just poised to scratch my car.

But a few weeks ago, after a lovely Sunday lunch at the Grants house, we watched the newest NOOMA DVD with Rob Bell called ‘Store’. It talks about not bottling up anger, and uses a wee sketch of a guy doing his grocery shopping. It’s one I think everyone can relate to. I know I do. At the end, he moves a shopping trolley out of an empty car parking space into one of the wee trolley park things.

So, inspired by this I thought. I’m going to put the trolley in the trolley park. So I did. And went back to my car. Just as I was getting into Cassie, I hear a voice – it’s the driver of the car next to Cassie who is packing his shopping in the boot.

“That was my trolley” he said.

Unfortunately, God did not answer my prayer of making a hole in the ground to swallow me up right there and then. I apologised profusely, as the guy went to the trolley park to retrieve the rest of his sandwich and full (not empty) carton of pineapple juice. I would have much preferred if he’d gotten angry, given me an evil glare, but instead he quite obviously was sniggering trying to contain the laughter building up inside him even as I reversed out the parking space to drive home.

So the moral of the story???

Make sure the trolley is abandoned before you return it to the trolley park.