Life's little puzzles

For many  of us life is an enigma.

Listening to the lunchtime news on the radio today as I drove to the supermarket - snow in Scotland in April, recession, and the usual clutch of government based horror stories - one is tempted to ask the question………… why? What's it all for?

That's far too big an issue for me to deal with here, but what does intrigue and quite often infuriate and irritate me are the Little puzzles that life  chooses to confront us with. These come in many forms. For some people, and here I'm including most of the rest of the world, it can be a ticket machine on the London Underground or at a train station. For others it's an ATM. I expect I'm not the only person who has stood behind someone at a cash machine only to begin to grow wide-eyed in amazement at the amount of time it's taken the person to make their transaction. For some people it would seem that the options thrown up by the hole in the wall are akin to an episode of University challenge i.e. there aren't many questions they know the answer to.

For those of us living in London this frustration extends to waiting behind a pair of lederhosen which are trying to  navigate the mysteries of the Oyster card ticket machine.

However lunchtime today threw up a new little challenge.

I've never considered the differing IQs of people who use various supermarket chains. I'm prepared to admit that I don't think that there are a huge number of Mensa members passing through the checkouts at Lidl,  and  I'm slightly drawn to the idea that the intelligence quotient bouncing around the aisles in Waitrose might be higher than that of other supermarkets, but all in all I'm pretty sure that the supermarkets cut an average slice across the intelligence strata of society.

That's probably what Sainsbury's in Forest Hill think too.   Else for what other reason would  they have installed a car park ticketing machine that would seem to defeat Einstein.

 Sainsbury's Forest Hill is a boon. Compact, recently refurbished, it's the equivalent to what used to be the corner shop. It's added bonus to those of us in the area is that it has a car park that offers you 2 hours free parking. Since even the most comprehensive visit to Sainsbury's is likely to last less than an ninety minutes, the facility is often used by people popping into Forest Hill for other things - dry cleaning, visiting the pound shops, or one of the rather nice restaurants that have popped up for lunch.   

To avail yourself of the free parking you have to  get a ticket for your car. At first glance the instructions would seem to be simple -  enter numeric registration and press Green button. Easy.  Except that the machine offers you an interface like a mobile phone. Letters and numbers. You know the sort of thing  - 3 presses on 5  will get you the L. So it would be fairly simple to enter in the full registration number. Except that the machine has said it only wants a numeric registration. In simple terms, it just once the numbers of your registration. The 2 residents of Forest Hill who were battling with the machine on my arrival had worked this out.  What they haven't worked out was that in order to get a five to show up you had to press the button four times. They were on the point of a parking rebellion - leaving their cars and complaining to the warden later that the ticket machine defeated them. Not a wise choice of action knowing the warden in that car park.

I pointed out how to make it work. How to get the number 54 printed on their ticket. The mixture of thanks and embarrassment  was a joy to behold. I get my karma from helping two people, but I also get a little of the necessary schadenfreude that I find each day needs. A moment of just being superior. I'm sure it won't last long and that just around the corner life will have a little puzzle guaranteed to defeat me!