You'd laugh and say nothing's that simple

For the past few weeks the newspaper has printed a voucher for a free gift - just cut out the voucher and take it to the relevant shop to claim the item. Some weeks it's something I'm not in the slightest bit interested in so I don't bother, and some weeks there isn't a local branch of the participating store. Other weeks are different; we thoroughly enjoyed our free box of Thornton's chocolates a fortnight ago! This week the offer was for a free pashmina (retail price £19.99) in a choice of colours. I thought that sounded rather nice so decided to do the week's shop in Leamington rather than Banbury because that's where the nearest branch of the shop was. We didn't bust a gut to get there particularly early, and I was surprised when I arrived, at about 11 o'clock, that there were still some left, although the choice of colours available had reduced during the morning. So I chose one (even with a limited choice of colour I think I should have gone for cream rather than brown, but hey-ho) and queued to hand over my voucher.

What amazed me was the woman who arrived shortly after I did and proceded to complain loudly about the reduced selection. She made certain the poor shopgirl knew that she'd made a special effort to come in from all of 10 miles away (so had I) and accused the staff of false advertising and so on and so on. Hats off to the poor girl - she remained very polite and explained that they'd opened at 8.30 and there had been a full selection then. It was also politely pointed out that the voucher did say "while stocks last".

I couldn't help but think about gift horses and mouths - the damn thing wasn't costing her anything, after all.

*notices that several pashminas from that particular chain of stores have appeared on ebay!*