Falling Foul of the Gods.

Guess which checkout till chose to malfunction today. Yup, you got it. And its timing was impeccable: it waited until all the shopping had gone through and been packed into bags, and then it froze. It wouldn’t swipe my loyalty card and it wouldn’t process my credit card. Neither would it let the checkout supervisor save the information so it could be transferred to another till.

‘Oh look,’ it said, ‘look who it is. It’s that JJ guy. Better stop working, then, and now's about the best time to cause him maximum inconvenience. Isn't life a hoot? Bye everybody.’

And so it fell asleep, leaving the operator and supervisor to apologise profusely as they told me I’d have to go to another till, take all the shopping out of the bags, and put it all through again.

Questions:

a) Is there a technology deva or devi floating on some celestial plain and taking a Great Deal of Unfriendly Interest in me?

b) If so, why?

c) Would it help, do you think, if I made a sacrifice for the purpose of appeasement? Should I, for example, burn my 1-year-old TV on a bonfire, or something?

You must admit, there does appear to be a trend developing here…