Life in a Northern Town

(I keep meaning to change my journal name to that. Maybe today's the day...)

So EAnnBlair challenged me to post 5 B&W photos. Here's number one, Huddersfield town centre. A mish-mash of wonderful old buildings, horrific concrete monstrosities, empty shops, pound shops and high street chains. I was on my way to Primark to meet Sarah (the meeting involved purchasing a Christmas jumper) and have lunch.

Looking at all the shops reminded me of my Secret Shopper career. A friend who lives in Spain signed up as a Secret Shopper and promptly was assigned visiting all the Haagen Dazs shops in the area on expenses. I couldn't sign up quickly enough. My first assignment was to take out health insurance from a stand in a shopping arcade - not exactly run 'n' raisin but I went anyway. They told me to use my real name but a fake address and bank account details. They didn't tell me the rep would have a postcode checker on his laptop - I ended up giving my real address as I couldn't think up an alternative quickly enough.

Later that night the phone rang - he had tried to set up the direct debit but the account number was invalid; he'd found me from Directory Enquiries. I had to promise to call him back then ring the Secret Shopper people, who said they would deal with it. I'd already submitted a very negative review of the utter crap he had talked whilst trying to get me to sign up and so he no doubt would guess what had happened. I expected eggs through my letterbox. Or worse.

Next assignment came through. I was to take the driving theory test (in that horrid office block on the left of the picture) and get caught cheating. Err, no thanks! So that was the end of that career. Meanwhile my friend still cruises the ice-cream parlours on the Costa del Sol and gets paid for it.

That was a bit of a ramble - well done if you got to the end.