Off to the Market

Food - a necessary evil.

It is not a secret that trawling through the supermarket aisles, chucking necessary shit into the trolley and then parting with a large thickness of wonga gives me the irrits. But in a different country with different brands and let's be honest, perhaps the best sweetie selection around, well that could sound like fun.... for about a second and a half.

The car park for the flat is tucked away more securely than a trannie's bits and bobs, so the first order of the day was to get the car out of the said spot. Did you know that directions given to miss a fucking great concrete post come in at least 2 different language? Male and Female. So Steve is driving and I am saying shit like, 'Whhooooaa, there's the post, go a bit that way, ( accompanied by wild pointing) oh for fuck's sake just leave it there and let's get a bus.' Steve is waiting to hear, ' left hand up my bum and stop'. Well suffice to say that a row erupted, much to the joy of the delivery blokes who the whole time were dodging around us with large sheets of plaster board, you know, just to make the whole process more interesting.

Apart from the thinning hair and the expanding waistline and the blinder eyes and the lack of patience, another age defined problem seems to be a serious loss of spatial awareness. When I lived here I zipped around everywhere, playing no contact dodgems and learned the gentle art of waving a thank you, when what you really said under your breath with the windows up was, 'Fuck that was close.' But my ability to tell how far away that bus is or the car, or in deed the biker or the kid, seems to have evapourated. I am blaming the wide open spaces of Oz, and a significant lack of practice. As Steve headed towards the supermarket, I spent time analysing the inside of my eyelids.

I had forgotten about large UK supermarkets. Seriously you buy ANYTHING there. Tellies and tweezers, formal frocks and furniture. And yes there is food too.

Now when I shop in OZ I have a process so that the stuff is not all mashed up in the trolley. Drinks aisle first and then canned stuff and then other shit. But as we didn't know where anything was we started at one end and made our way.

We ended up having to do a trolley renovation at the beer spot and then I ran out of steam.

So to the checkout.

This is the pile of baggies from yesterday carefully tied in knots so I can forget 'em next time and do it all again.

I didn't think it possible to miss the Oz folk who shovel your shit through the beepy beepy beepy, but yep I do.  Here you are made to feel like some very ungreenie crim when you admit that you will be needing large numbers of those murderous plastic bags and when you are passed a wedge of 'em and the shovelling of stuff starts, you have to bag it all up yourself! And this really should be an Olympic event cos you have to move like Usain Bolt to get it all stacked away in back into the trolley before it becomes suitable only for landfill. There is no finesse in the shopping packing.

All the miss-mash into the boot and it fitted perfectly. Yippee.

Then home to get all those dreadful bags through a security door, into a lift, through another security door and then into the flat and up a flight of stairs to get to the kitchen. Whew!

The docket came with an ONLINE shopping voucher, which is looking pretty good to me for next time.