James Bond's Alpha Romeo

The two women were wasting my time. I've always felt very protective of my time, I don't have much of it, and I have no allowance in my schedule for that kind of tomfoolery. Or any kind of tomfoolery.

When I write, it is pretty much always in my lunch break. My precious, inestimable, invaluable hour-long slot that rapidly disappears as imbeciles steal my time from right under my nose, twisting it, beating it and flushing down the toilet.

I'm an off-the-cuff writer (like most of my friends here), meaning my endless, mindless, brainless drivel just splurges out in one hit, and then lunch is over, so I post it. Not that I'm particularly proud of that, as the resulting flood of grammatical errors is enough to make a grown man cry.

Note, I use the word "writer" loosely here. When I say writer, in my head I just hear "blah blah kerfuffle blah".

So in order to make the most of my hour, I shoot straight out of work and straight to the same old same old pub, which has cheap coffee, cheap beer, free wifi and (best of all) hardly any customers.

So today that was where I headed, ready to utilize my hour with the sort of efficiency that makes me a good programmer, but destines me to be a bad listener (I try, I really do).

Bringing about my demise, two women single-handedly (or quad-handedly?!) whittled away at my hour as they dithered, faffed and fuddled their order. In the time they took to klutze their way through the simple task of buying two burgers and two drinks I could have carved an Alfa Romeo GTV6 out of a single tree trunk using nothing but nail-clippers and a teaspoon. For the sake of flippancy and continuing the recent hamster theme, I could also have carved an entire colony of hamster joy-riders. Fully seat-belted in.

For the sake of expediency, and for the sake of my diminished lunch break, here's a quick questionnaire for you.

Q) Did the two women have any idea what they wanted to eat or drink before they attempted to order?

Q) Did the two women state they were paying together using a two-for-one deal before they ordered, or did they wait until after the order had been put through the till? Or did they try to pay cash, before discovering that they did not have the correct change? Or did they try to pay separately by card, but discover that individually their costs were below the "minimum card limit"? Or did they somehow, with mindbogglingly imbecility, manage to combine the above three options into one huge mammoth-sized fuddle?