EARLY MORNING SHOPPING

Because we are still trying to be very careful about not mixing with lots of people, I often go out shopping early in the morning and today was no exception.

I was up and dressed by 6.45 and ready to go by 7 o’clock.  I was amazed at how dark it was - in fact, it was almost like the middle of the night - and for me, it was, because I am not an early bird like Mr. HCB, as you may remember.  I’m not very happy about driving in the dark either, so I drove very gingerly, although there wasn’t too much traffic at that time of the morning.  

There were very few people at Tesco just after 7 o’clock - in fact, the main people shopping were those “picking” for online orders.  This has two advantages - one is that all of them were wearing masks and secondly, if I wanted to know where something was, I only needed to ask one of the “pickers” and they could tell me whether I needed aisle 27 or aisle 38!  You can see one of them, dressed as an elf in my collage - he was a very “‘elpful elf” and even agreed to let me take his photograph.  

I took several other photographs on my way round - and I can tell you, quite categorically, that there are no calories whatsoever when you just LOOK at boxes of chocolates like Heroes and Quality Street!  Mind you, I’m guessing that there won’t be many who just look at the boxes and there were hundreds, if not thousands of all of those and more and enough drink everywhere to launch ten thousand ships!  

I did treat myself to a bottle of Tesco’s own Irish Cream Liqueur - Rich Dairy Cream swirled with Irish Whiskey mainly - because I like a little tipple of this just at Christmas time and it even had my name on it!  I read yesterday that this one came out top in a “blind test” of twenty different varieties - and of course, it was much, much cheaper than the named brand that begins with a “B”.

I chatted to one of the pickers and told her about the test when asking her where I could find it on the shelves, and she told me that even Russians liked the Tesco’s own brand Vodka - not that I am a Vodka drinker now, although I used to like it in my younger days!

The shopping was done and I was back home at 8.15 but the traffic was manic by then.  Interestingly, the ones who were the most aggressive were Mums with young children in the car!  I appreciate that they were probably in a hurry to drop their children off and get to work - but their standard of driving was atrocious.

It was raining and quite windy, for most of the morning but the sun has been out for a while, so Mr. HCB has been out in the garden this afternoon cutting down plants ready for our last Green Bin collection this week;  our next one isn’t until the end of January, so he wanted to do as much work as possible before tomorrow.

I thought a jigsaw collage of  my morning might be amusing to do - especially as Mr. HCB likes jigsaw puzzles - but with only four pieces, I don’t think he would have much trouble doing this one unless of course, he has been drinking! 

Advent Haiku
This cute little elf
was very ‘elpful to me -
one of Tesco’s best!
Maureen Iles