Every now and then, life presents you with such an incredible opportunity to secure yourself a bargain that you cannot, simply must not, pass it up.

“A dozen red roses is 90% off, that’s just 60p instead of £6.” announced the utterly bored tanoy man at my local Tesco.

I took my eyes of the wide selection of luxury toilet paper before me, and braced myself for the inevitable rush to the front of the Tesco store where the flowers are kept.

There is of course a limit to how fast you can walk in a supermarket without drawing attention to yourself, it is 3.539 miles per hour for those who keep track of these things. Due to my increasing pace, I considered calling out the name of a not-really-lost child in order to justify my speed through the ailses.

As I approached 3.539 miles per hour I remembered that today (last Thursday – this is a historical piece), the day after St Valentines day, I did not have anyone to give a dozen red roses to. This was momentarily upsetting, but a bargain is a bargain, after all, and so I continued onwards. Past aisle 4 with the household goods towards aisle 2 with its enormous variety of tinned vegetables.

I found myself looking at the women who were shopping alone and wondering how romantic it would seem if I gave the flowers to one of them. They would have to be fit of course, as I am not going to waste 60p on just anyone, that would be financial suicide (or small-scale financial self-harming at the very least).

One or two of the shopping ladies presented themselves as possible candidates for my incredibly romantic gesture, and I was planning my approach, (“Hi, I’ve been looking for you since yesterday when these were still six pounds, would you like them?”) when I must have jumped up to 3.540 miles per hour, because two people at the flower counter glanced in my direction and immediately picked up the last two bunches of roses.

I bet they did not even want them, and had not even gone to the trouble of creating a rather contrived plan in their head to accost a quite fit, yet completely unknown, women in the bread aisle, in order to present her with day old roses in the hope of securing a cheap date.

They could have ruined a potentially beautiful relationship, or saved me from a restraining order. I am not sure which was more likely.

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