DEAR BSH,

Another tale of my days working in the Dorchester bike shop. There was, as in any retail outlet, customers that were a pleasure to serve (i.e. of normal mentality),

and the odd few that thought they could outwit/try to humiliate us with their status – as in ‘I’m the customer, and the customer’s always right‘ (clever dicks, ass’oles, stupid pricks, etc., you get the picture). There was this one bloke that used to paint the retaining screws on his bike with yellow paint so that he’d know if the mechanic’d undone them as part of the service procedure (if he had, the paint would’ve been disturbed). His favourite was to paint the contact breaker retaining screw that had to be loosened to adjust them (but he never painted the housing screws), obviously trying to outwit us, so we knew that, when he got home, he’d take off the cover to see if the paint’d been damaged on the retaining screw of the contact to make sure we’d adjusted them). Because of this, we’d tighten the housing cover screws with Loctite, stopping him undoing them, and having a look (they were a bastard to get undone on his next service!).

Another bloke, a regular customer, thought he was a copper, and used the phrases ‘At this moment in time’,