Points of View....

I needed to pick up some essentials at lunchtime today so I popped over to the close by "Happy Shopper" (sic). I snuck out of work about 11.50am, grabbed a shallow trolley (I'm no good with a basket) and proceeded to side drive into the store.

Side driving is my preferred style when behind (ahem, aside) a supermarket trolley....solely because all varieties of trolley I have come across to date, in this country and others visited, have their pushing handles just about smack bang in line with with my eye-level....

Not only does this make seeing where I am going particularly tricky, it makes steering something, that is at the best of times notoriously frustrating, nigh on impossible, as all the weight in relation to my body is pivoting from my adams apple....

Side driving, whilst of course taking up twice the width of a trolley....at least means I can see where I'm going and avoid, most of the time, injuring folk....

By my, albeit amateurish calculations, its like someone of average height pushing around a steel basket the size of an Austin Mini-Metro....and I'm sure you know how crap they were at going around corners....!

Years ago, I had this fantastical idea;- I would write to Jim'll Fix-it (apologies) and ask the team if they could make a store full of said metro sized shopping trolleys and fill it with average height folk for me to watch as they struggle their way through the hordes of ignorant shoppers....

....asking said shoppers for assistance to reach tins of custard from shelves three times their height....

....and when, no if, they eventually make it to the checkout....they then have to unload their produce one by one, from the trolley that they can only reach around the edges of....onto the conveyor that too is situated just about level with their chin....

I'm pretty sure they would leave before they got to try packing ;)

Luckily stores nowadays have helpful people, like Simone here, at the checkouts....

....so as long as I keep my shopping list short and time my visit just right, I at least make it through the bag packing nightmare....

This is pretty much why my kids have been coming shopping with me ever since they could walk....!