Carrier bags

I know it isn't fashionable to like plastic carrier bags but I've always thought they were one of the best inventions of the 20th century. I re-use mine as bin liners and if I didn't get them free I'd have to buy bin liners. Now the Consumers' Association are saying supermarkets use too many of them when they deliver online shopping orders and cited Tesco putting meat and washing up liquid in two separate bags with only one item in each bag.

To me there is nothing wrong with that as washing up liquid if it leaked would make a mess of some food items. Meat should be in a separate bag for the same reason. I'm all for taking your own bag when you go shopping and I have done this for the last twenty years - even before 'climate change' and saving the planet were flavour of the month. But if I didn't have some plastic carrier bags I would have to buy bin liners so I resent being told that I shouldn't have plastic carrier bags! Tesco at least say you can have your shopping with or without - it's up to you.

The issue around carrier bags is trivial but to me it seems one more example of the 'goodie goodies' trying to enforce their opinion on the rest of us. In the same vein I see Paul McCartney is starting a campaign to persuade us to give up meat on Monday each week - why?? What are they going to do with all the spare sheep, cows, pigs and chickens if we all do that? I don't eat meat every day in any case so I'm not giving it up deliberately just to make someone else feel better. Bah humbug!

Saturday chores done

Well apart from the washing which is ongoing. The floors and the bathrooms are done - (sounds as though we live in a mansion but new houses these days almost always have a downstairs loo and an ensuite as well as a 'family' bathroom.) Whilst useful I think they're designed to give whoever does the housework more to do. Tesco have kindly delivered my shopping right at the very beginning of the two hour slot which is convenient. So I have just about one and a half days to relax before it's back to work on Monday.

Maybe more later perhaps about books I'm currently reading.

The Vows of Silence

No - I haven't taken a vow of silence - heaven forbid! I finished reading Susan Hill's latest Simon Serrailler offering 'The Vows of Silence'. I'm starting to find Simon himself slightly annoying. He resents his father's lady friend Judith for taking his mother's place and makes it clear in a very childish way that he does. Even Cat, his sister takes him to task over it. He can't seem to make up his mind whether he wants to be single and celibate for the rest of his life and objects to his sister talking about it. He nearly fails to catch the criminal because he lets his own prejudices get in his way. However I'm sure it makes for a more interesting story to have a fallible detective. I went from wanting to shake some sense into him to crying for him.

This story is a tear jerker in any case. Simon's brother-in-law Chris is seriously ill and Cat must combine the skills of mother, doctor and wife. The gunman who is terrorising Lafferton is killing newly married women for no apparent reason. There is about to be a society wedding to which Royal visitors are expected - a security nightmare for the police including Simon - especially as the gunman has killed once as a newly married couple leave the church. There are many minor sub plots as well to hold the reader's interest and an insight into the mind of the gunman. Definitely gripping stuff though I did work out who the gunman was before the end.

I had a good example yesterday of why I do most of my food shopping - and everything else come to think of it - online. I called in at Tesco because I wanted a particular type of Hovis bread and some cash back. They hadn't got the bread so I went to look for a couple of other things I wanted - they only had one of them. The place was packed. On a Monday morning? I had to queue to be served and was tempted by their latest 'green' hessian bag - because it's got ladybirds on it.

I was standing idly in the queue watching everyone else and noticing how everyone had brought their bags with them so that they didn't need many carrier bags. What a lot of sheep I thought all brainwashed by this rubbish about climate change. So I deliberately took a couple of carrier bags - one of which I used to put my new 'green' bag in! Childish I agree. I have used a Marks & Spencer's black fabric bag for ages to put my sandwiches etc in when I go to work and that's what I shall use the ladybird one for.

I just found the whole experience so irritating and frustratingly slow - in fact it probably took me as long as it would have done to do the shopping online!

We then had to go and get some oil to top up the car. It's a Mitsubishi Outlander and the handbook says it needs to have VW oil in it because it's a VW engine. So we trot along to a VW dealer because it's nearer than going to a Mitsubishi dealer - and they wouldn't sell us any. Words failed both of us, so we trotted off to the Mitsubishi dealer where the car came from - who kindly put the oil in for us.

We then went to another branch of Tesco and managed to get the bread we wanted - and rather too many things we actually didn't need but just fancied. This is why I save money by shopping online I thought. But this experience was better as they weren't so crowded. We also - from B&Q - got some ant killer and a leaflet about this new Dulux painting system - Paint Pod - which does everything but make you a cup of coffee. I may invest in one since it looks easy and much less messy - trouble is they cost nearly £70. But we do have a personal recommendation from someone who hates decorating who says it makes the whole process much quicker with no mess. Of course £70 is cheaper than paying a decorator. Now we just need a similar system for gloss painting and I'll be the first in the queue to buy that.!

I now need to potter about and do some housework and surf the newspapers for what's going on in the world and then it will be time to work out what to have to eat this evening. I could definitely get used to this life though I suspect I wouldn't get enough exercise unless I made an effort and went out for a walk regularly.

Ship of fools

If you want some humour with your religion then you could do worse than try www.shipoffools.com which labels itself as 'The Magazine of Christian Unrest'. Here you can join in the search for a pizza with the face of Our Lord on it, create your own Virgin Mary piece of toast and see some very good religious cartoons. You can even buy a Virgin Mary memory stick. Then if you click on one of the links it will give you some interesting facts about today in history. One of the snippets for today - 17 December - is as follows:

It is St Olympias's Day, a wealthy widow who gave vast amounts to the poor and became a deaconness in John Chrysostom's Constantinople. She is chiefly celebrated for making things difficult for John's successor after he was deposed.

You can also buy a St Laurence pincushion to recreate his torment of being tied to a tree and having arrows fired at him. In appallingly bad taste I know but I could not resist a chuckle at some of the stuff on there. I could not help thinking that it would have been taken down long ago if it had been about any other religion . . .

I have done the last of my Christmas shopping today - mainly food bits and pieces. Once I get my Tesco order tomorrow, that will be it for us. Anything else we don't have we'll have to do without. I need to make some pork and apple sausage rolls but that is definitely it this year. Surprisingly enough the smallish - 25,000 population - local town where we went this morning to shop, was relatively quiet. We had deliberately picked 8.30am as being a quiet time, but hadn't expected it to be quite that empty.

The supermarkets, and Marks & Spencer Simply Food, all seemed to be stacked to the rafters with no one buying. I can only presume there will be a stampede later in the week - which I intend to avoid.

I'm not due back at work now until 2 weeks on Wednesday and I intend to make the most of my time off - reading and maybe even writing as well as surfing the net without one eye on clock like I usually do.

Off to read some more of Rosy Thornton's 'Hearts and Minds' - about a man in a woman's world.