Day 76: Over and out

Day 42: Confessions of a shopaholic

I had never until now attempted to order online as I find watching people much more interesting than trying to navigate a supermarket’s website. For someone famed for her lists, I also tend to keep a mental 'shadow' list that is known only to me and triggered by browsing the aisles and being inspired by a particular ingredient. Virtual browsing just isn't the same. 

However, as an oldie and having been advised to try and avoid shops, people and certainly anything that breathes I decided to break my 'click and collect' duck.  

I was told to contact the shop on their app to warn them of my impending arrival - I assume so they could lay out the red carpet and organise a welcoming committee.  But that just kept crashing. The alternative was to go on their website on my arrival - triggering I assume a Secret Service style 'eagle has landed' type response. But their site was down. I therefore had to take the manual approach and talk to human beings. A security guard at the door told me I had to brave the queues on the travellator to reach a collection point where a cheery young chappy approached with my order. I had now encountered, spoken to or bumped into at least 12 people so I think the days of ‘click and collect’ are over for me as I will probably now have contracted the virus and end up having emergency deliveries anyway. Hopefully there'll be a substitute for the custard creams that appear to be the sole contribution to this crisis made by the Minister for Community, Housing and Local Government.

This was not the end of the drama though. Bearing in mind that it had taken me ages to select alternatives on their website it was most annoying to be told that now they had given me substitutes for my substitutes!! I had ordered 2 bunches of asparagus and they substituted it with 2 bunches of grapes, strawberries were replaced by chillies, lettuce replaced by cabbage and tomatoes replaced by beetroot. Apart from the first item where 'a bunch' was swapped for 'a bunch' I decided that whoever was doing the picking just picked up any old thing that happened to be the same colour. Just who do supermarkets employ to do their picking and packing for online orders? Are they stupid, lacking in all common sense, or is it a game they play among themselves to entertain?  Note this phenomenon isn't limited to supermarkets. I have it on good authority that people ordering from House of Fraser (be it pillows, weights, soap etc) have lately all received (incomplete) trampolines. 

I have decided that I am clearly going insane. Unpacking shopping has become a mammoth task in itself. I never thought that I would end up rubbing every item of shopping with antibacterial spray and I’m sure that washing boxes of fish fingers used to be the kind of behaviour that Channel 5 enjoyed making lurid documentaries about. But now we’re all obsessive-compulsive clean freaks who think nothing of rinsing a packet of crumpets under the tap. I have to buy extra detergent wipes in order to disinfect the detergent wipes.  Remember the days when the most you needed to pop to the shops was a jacket (and there were those who didn't even bother with that)? Now a face mask and gloves are necessities, which must also be classed as essential because popping out for a bag of crisps could cause untold deaths. Two months ago, the only bag of flour I had in my cupboard was a year old and full of mites but now I find myself rushing to the baking aisle, ignoring the one-way rules to get a precious kilo of super fine ’00’ grade – what I do with it IF I ever find it is anybody’s guess. Probably after searching in vain for a spicy cabbage, grape and beetroot bread recipe I'll wind up plonking it on ebay (or I'll forget to do that and simply rehouse the mites).