After After Eights

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

I had a relatively quiet day at home today. Oh, I did some work and attended some meetings but that was it.

And the meetings I'm RED FLAG RED FLAG attending worry me RED FLAG RED FLAG. 

There's a lot of "This Is How We Work!" and "Here's How You Can Feel Empowered and Empowerment is Good!" meetings.

RED FLAG RED FLAG

But you know. It's fine. So far work is not too demanding and anyway Xmas is right around the corner. I'll just do my thing and see how it goes*. 

As for Caro, she was having an EMERGENCY.

"We are out of After Eights," she told me. 

So if you have been reading this blog as long as I've been writing it, you'll know that Caro develops obsessions with things and just eats the heck out of them for months and then scunners herself and moves on. The things she has eaten over the past few years that I recall are:

- Smarties
- Peanut M&M's
- Liquorice
- Afghan biscuits
- Explorer sweeties
- Crunchie bars
- Peanut slabs

But the new thing is After Eights. Which is worrying because they are kind of a Xmas thing, right? After that they are much harder to get hold of. 

And last night we ran OUT of them. 

So we went on a little mission to TWO separate stores (store number one did not have them). Today's blip is taken in store number one. They are called "Pak 'n' Save" and their thing is like they are the budget supermarket because they do not pack your groceries for you**.

Their marketing exploits this low-budget ethos by having a mascot which is literally just a stick man. So here he is in a santa hat, which made me laugh. 

The good news is that me and Caro had fun at the stores and got not only After Eights but lots of cat food for the birds (yes, you read that right) and equilibrium was restored to the house. 

As for me, I might start putting away some more special secret boxes of After Eights for February.... just in case.

S.

* Drew, the BA from Auckland made me laugh though. He posted an audio clip of him playing "Do You Hear What I Hear?" on steel drums on the WhatsApp emergency business continuity channel last night. 

So this channel is PURELY for warnings about earthquakes or what have you. I gave his recording a heart and told him I enjoyed it. I hope he doesn't get a wrist-slap.

** Which is weird. As a UK shopper I am used to doing my own packing even at posh shops like Waitrose but HERE I would get TOLD OFF by staff at Countdown and New World if I tried to do it myself. 

But THEN during the pandemic, the world was turned upside down and I had to start packing my OWN groceries even at New World. Oh! The indignity of it! But you know, national emergency and all that. 

Even now, these stores rarely pack my groceries for me. So theoretically the SAME as Pak 'n' Save. But Pak 'n' Save still styles itself as budget. 

Oh and if you attempt to pack your groceries at the TILL in Pak 'n' Save they tell you off. You have to wheel your groceries away before you are allowed to pack them. I am unsure why this is. It is just The Law.