Tescrodeo

There’s fun to be had without even going beyond your local supermarket.

For example, I believe Tesco is planning to increase the speed (and therefore excitement level) of their travelators (not sure if travelator is the right word, I mean those moving-ramps to take you up a level without carrying a trolley on the stairs, then convey you safely back to earth).

The automated warning system which tells you to ‘Please push your trolley firmly at the end of the conveyor’ is sounding more adamant, almost panicky, and is now spoken by both male and female voices.

What happens if you don’t push your trolley firmly at the end of the conveyor?

Female recording: ‘Please push your trolley firm…’ *sound of crunching metal, food blasted into the air and screaming shoppers* ‘…oh there goes another one, PLEASE push your trolley firmly at the end of the conveyor!’

Male recording: ‘These people take the biscuit. Tell you what, fancy a drink later on? Please push your trolley…’

And so on. Currently the travelators crawl at a snail's pace (moment of speculative pedantry: can snails have a 'pace', surely you need legs to 'pace'?). I would ratchet their speed up to a fair sprint. The people of this nation deserve excitement.

As a child I was wary of escalators because I believed if I wasn’t quick enough to jump off at the end, I would be dragged, nay – sucked! – into the inner workings and basically end up as a 2-dimensional person going round and round and round.

I haven’t yet seen any evidence to contradict my childhood theory.