bunn | Entries tagged with shopping

We went to town for the first time since the Before Times, wandered around the park with the hounds, then went and found a cafe that was doing socially-distanced takeaway-with-tables. Felt slightly guilty afterwards because it seemed so wasteful to have all those bags and boxes for one meal. It was all paper / compostibles, though the environmental impact of making & transporting all that card & paper must be significant. The hounds had a sausage each, which pleased them greatly, and it was so warm that even though it drizzled, even Rosie didn't seem to mind.

The car park was nearly empty, and the park and footpaths quiet for a Saturday. Many of the shops were open, but only the food shops seemed to have many people around them. I had to queue for a while for the green-grocer, since only two people in at a time.

Theo found the excursion madly exciting and yanked Pp all over the place, woozeling loudly. He really needs more practice in busier places, seeing more people and dogs, the months of walking in quiet spots have not been ideal. Still, as long as there's no return of the plague, we can deal with that.

Went to the cheese shop and the greengrocer, dressed like bandits with scarves over our faces (still haven't done anything about masks, but scarves are acceptable, apparently.) None of the staff in the shops were masked-up, though the lady at the garage did when I stopped for petrol.

Oh, my new-old Ebay camera came! VERY exciting.

Wow, my car, my camera, my phone and my laptop are all currently in a state of entirely not-broken*! Pity the oven, the microwave and the extractor fan are all currently knackered. We'll get to them eventually.

In other news, I have now re-painted the bathroom, and the front door is no longer chipped-red, but a brilliant bright blue.

*well, nearly. The car check engine light is on, but it's been on for ages, I'm nearly sure that whatever it's complaining about isn't serious.

Bought a pile of Tesco socks, despite my objection to Tesco on their strategy of absurd drama-mongering press releases, like the Marmite thing. Honestly, Tesco always run that kind of story and people always fall for it and share the latest story that is 100% calculated to catch the eye by being zeitgesty and a bit controversial, support the Tesco brand narrative that they are the champions of cheapness and then softly and silently vanish away afterwards like a boojum. All Tesco news stories are boojums, except for the odd one that they'd prefer you not to know about, involving accounting scandals.

Anyway, I went to the women's sock section, and it was full of small, elegant and often rather frilly or decorated socks. None of them looked warm. You could buy plain black ones, but they were thin and clearly designed for wearing with Smart Womanly Shoes, not stomping through mud in boots.

So I went to the mens section again and stocked up on thick, warm socks in attractive shades of blue, purple and green, for noticeably less than it would have cost me to buy thin chilly Woman Socks. Fortunately I am blessed with relatively large feet.

FEET HAVE NO GENITALS, TESCO. I really don't understand why all socks are not presented in one row, going from Very Small to Very Big. I don't object to the existence of thin socks with sparkly kittens on, but I reckon that at least 80% of dogwalkers I meet are female, and there was not a single sock in the 'women's section' that was well-adapted to that sort of life.

ETA: yeah, yeah, I know. Don't give them money and then go away and moan about them on the internet : take the money elsewhere to someone who does it right. But I'm SO lazy and also I have this internet right here to whinge into!

Someone tell me I don't need to buy six Chilean Guava bushes. I am such a sucker for exotic fruits! And six for a tenner!!!

There's probably an argument I should instead, buy a friend for my Actinidia Arguta. In theory, that Actinidia is supposed to be the variety 'Issai' which is smaller than most Actinidias, and self fertile. In practice, mine is a honking great thing that is yet to set fruit, despite its ideal sunny, well drained position in mildly acid soil - and I am starting to think that Thompson and Morgan have yet again screwed things up and have sent me one of the other Actinidias that is not self fertile.

I now chuck all T& M catalogues straight in the recycling bag : I have had way too many gardening disappointments from them. But the Chilean Guavas are from Suttons. I have been less disappointed with them, so far as I recall.

Back in March I asked you all for your opinion about how and where I should buy walking boots. Your opinions, were, unsurprisingly, inconclusive, and fearful of acquiring The Wrong Boots Grommit, I decided to go to a walking boot shop instead. But alas; the walking shop not only had no boots of that particular style in stock, they had no similar boots at all. Apparently my preferred boot had been discontinued, and they saw no call for lightweight walking boots in the winter. (I am not keen on heavy boots. If it's that wet, I'd rather wear wellies. Crocs wellies are actually surprisingly comfortable to walk in, for the price.). I left my phone number with the boot shop, assured that they would call me very soon when the summer walking boots came in. (I'm imagining them bouncing merrily through the door of the shop in pairs under their own steam).

But the walking boot shop never did call. Disconsolate, I continued to wear my beloved old boots until the uppers had almost entirely come off the soles, and they were basically held together by a mixture of mud and willpower.

Today, I found myself not wanting to take mud off the boots, lest the boot should disintegrate. And so I decided to google my old boots, and found that some enterprising Amazon supplier has found a hidden stockpile of their siblings, and is selling them off at a discount! I have therefore taken the Sesame Street gamble that two of these boots might not be like the others, and ordered some. Have toes crossed.

Current Mood: hopeful

( In which I consider investing in a new sort of berry, Az nobly protects me from Carpet People, and Strawberries Come Up Trumps. )

[Poll #1827999]

And for the sake of completeness:

the same brand & style of boot

Same brand, different style - but so cheap!

Current Mood: indecisive

You asked me, through the medium of your magic Questioning Card Machine, whether your staff were well presented.

I said yes, because I did not want them to get in trouble.

The truth is, that they were not, through no fault of their own. It would be difficult for anyone to look well presented in that uniform, and the addition of at least three multicoloured badges per staff member inviting me to ask them about membership, telling me their name, and saying that they have to ask about my age, does not help the visual effect.

However, a more fundamental point is that I do not really care if they are wearing a top hat and tails, elderly jeans, woolly jumpers, black leather, or psychodelic minidresses (possibly, I would have a slight preference for the woolly jumpers. I like woolly jumpers). None of those things would bother me *one whit* nor would they affect my purchases of cucumbers and beetroot.

What does affect my purchases of these things is when the shelves are empty of the items I desire.

I would have thought that this is something that your QCM could usefully ask about without calling on me to make aesthetic judgements on matters about which I care not at all, or reflecting on your checkout staff who, so far as I can tell, appear to be doing their job to the best of their ability.

*afterthought* I wonder if they actually collect and use the data from all the questions, or if it's purely there to give the customers a feeling of having Made Their Point?

Current Mood: grumpy

( Blinds )

( Duke and shopping. )

Current Mood: tired

Until recently, I owned two waterproof hats. This was a good thing, as I definitely have a waterproof hat kind of life. I don't know what happened to one of the hats, but I do know that my Drizabone hat took a liking to Iceland and decided to stay there.

Today I went to Tavistock to buy a new hat. The Pannier market waterproof clothing stall had nothing waterproof in my size. The farm supply shop, ditto. The hiking shop had a £25 folding waterproof hat that fit, but that I didn't like. Devon Hatters was closed.

I really would have thought that if there was one item you could reliably buy in a town on the edge of Dartmoor with astonishingly high average rainfall, it would be a waterproof hat. I think Tavistock is still in 'late summer' mode...

Current Mood: hatless

I have had my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7 for three years now. It still works. It's still a pretty good, reliable camera. It takes decent action shots, excellent close-ups, has a good range of standard modes and if feeling industrious and perfectionist, I can improve results further by manually setting almost everything. I recently bought it a new set of batteries, some of which I haven't even used yet. OK, I am stuck with the one lens, but it's a pretty good one for the size. So, really, I don't need a new camera.

Alas, I foolishly wandered near a camera review website today. And I fell horribly in love with the new(ish) Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 - it seems to be the step forward in terms of a really small DSLR-quality camera that I've been looking for. It's about the same size as my current camera, but with a bigger (and swappable) lens, and using an adaptor, can also take all these lenses. The reviews say that it focuses as fast as any conventional SLR (important for all those running greyhound shots!).

It's got no video, but then I shoot video once in a blue moon. And as a final sign that it is made for me, it comes in red and blue as well as the standard boring camera colours! I love blue or red gadgets!

WANT!!! WANT before we go to Iceland and have exciting new things to photograph! Unfortunately it costs roughly 500quid that I do not have. Woe is me!

Oh yes, and if I hadn't idiotically driven my car into a wall for no good reason I could probably just-about-not-quite afford to buy it. Wail! Curse!

Current Mood: greedy

I actually wrote this a couple of days ago and LJ ate it when I tried to post it. It's just reappeared in the form of a saved draft (but wasn't available before!) How odd.

Can't remember what I originally meant to post now!

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