We went down and met the guys in the van, and they started loading the crates of beer into the foyer. I remembered that I'd seen Glen using a shopping trolley to wheel stuff around the building, so I thought I'd go and get it.
(I'd spoken to Glen earlier in the day. He told me how he'd been clearing out a room in the bit of the building that used to be the Hackney Archives. He found an old book, unremarkable on first sight - Agricultural Practice in the South Downs or something - but old. He had the foresight to look it up on eBay instead of throwing it away. It turned out that the book was worth about £300, so he sold it and pocketed the money.)
Me and Ross found the shopping trolley upstairs in Glen's little cupboard. Coincidentally, it was a Sansbury's trolley, and we had a little joke in the lift about it.
Eva's mate was giving us a hand. He had started bringing crates through by hand, but when he saw the trolley he dumped his boxes in and followed us back to the front. The Sainsbury's guys had gone to get more beer from the van. Me, Ross, Eva and Eva's mate started piling the beer up in the shopping trolley.
We were about to turn the loaded trolley round and push it to the lift when the Sainsbury's guys come back in. The first one came through the doors and started piling the beer, but the second one looked at me and said,
'What do you think you're doing?'
I kind of laughed at him, thinking I'd missed something and said, 'Sorry mate?'
'Is this a joke mate? What do you think you're doing with that trolley?'
I laughed again, but more confused, 'Yeah, sorry. What - but it's fine right?'
He shook his head, let go of his wheely trolley and came over to me and started unloading the crates from the Sainsbury's trolley.
'It's all going back', he said, looking round at his colleague, who appeared to be as confused as us but did as he was told and started putting his crates back on the wheely trolley.
'What are you doing?', I said to him, 'You can't just put it back in the van. We paid for this.'
'You should have thought about that', said the Sainsbury's guy, taking two crates of beer at a time, 'before you stole someone else's private property.'
Eva was just looking back and forth between my face and the guy's face, her eyes were all wide and her mouth was a bit open. I didn't know what to say.
'It's Glen's trolley!', I shouted, but the guy wasn't having any of that.