For the sake of momentum

Life Just like Aimee Mann her song 'Momentum', I've got my routines. Even though I'm unemployed. Every Sunday when I walk across the park to buy the newspaper I always go to the same newsagent even though it isn't the closest so that I can post a dvd back to LoveFilm.

During the week, I still wake up at eight o'clock every morning and watch the headlines on BBC Breakfast rolling my eyes throughout each problem with a link, stumble over a sentence or bizarre line reading; I still go shopping every Thursday night, still going down Bold Street through to Church Street buying whichever magazines and comic books have been published that day.

And I always go to the same chip shop on occasion. Except for tonight, when I discovered they stopped opening on a Monday, so we had to go to the other takeaway further down Lark Lane. In reality there shouldn't be anything between them, chips are chips, soft strips of potato in a hot skin of fat just as fish is still something that once swam now wrapped in a crispy batter - except -- it just isn't the same.

When you're used them being done a certain way, a simple deviation in the recipe can spoil your tea. These were softer, greasier, and stuck together more easily. At my usual chippy, they're crunchier around the edges and closer to potato wedges - you feel like you're eating something substantial and they complement everything and don't simply absorb the gravy when you pour it on like these do, becoming a potatoy-gravy mass.

But the funny thing about these kinds of routines is that sometimes they can be broken. The chips weren't untasty - just different. Sometimes I will go straight to Tesco on a Thursday or sleep past the headlines and have to look at the more lucid interactive red button version. And in the future, for various reasons I won't be going to that same paper shop on a Sunday. Because I won't be completely unemployed. I hope there's a post box nearby.

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