This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hi, my name's Tom Lamont. I'm the author of A Day in the Life of Almost Every Vending Machine in the World, which published in April 22.

I've got a feeling this was a post-COVID idea, one of those ones where perhaps reporting opportunities

were limited at the time. I've always loved vending machines. I've always been interested in them,

brought to hunger at the sight of them from school days on really but they're in the corridors of my

secondary school they were in the corridors of my workplaces you would kind of

pass the the colorful bars and snacks and and instantly feel hungry and I guess

something sort of lodged in my mind that later became the sort of journalistic seed of something.

I know that it didn't really take shape as a sort of possible long read or long piece of reported journalism

until I came across the right people through whom I thought I could tell a good story.

The main one of those is the main character of this story, who's a kind of vending machine

kingpin based in Manchester.

And I first heard about him when I read a local news story in a newspaper about him on

Halloween night instead of answering his door and giving out

sweets and chocolate to the kids who came, he just put one of his vending machines in the

driveway and set it to free mode.

And I thought then, oh, that's my guy.

That's the hero of my tale.

I don't think this story had any great political weight or

cultural weight at the time. It was the kind of story I love to read though, which is

processy and intricate and detailed about a very specific thing. I know that I had real trouble coming up with an ending for it. This is perhaps

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