One word? When seven would do…

You know those times when you think you had a good idea and the whole bloody universe gangs up to show you just how wrong you were? That was me 20 minutes before I needed to be at work this afternoon. When I was stood in Asda in Brighton – 15 miles from work with two full shopping trolleys, a husband in denial (of being my husband along with all sorts of other things) a son who wanted to cuddle me, a daughter who wanted to pack the bags and was articulating this at high volume, a queue of people behind me, an checkout operator with a ‘there’s no rush, duck’ attitude and precisely £17.82 less in my pocket than the total she’d just rung up. Oh, and wearing unsuitable clothes for work and having had no lunch too.

So this morning I’d got up after a lie in and swanned about eating croissants. Now there is an art to eating croissants akin to the art of eating Cadbury’s flakes. Anyone recall the series of tv ads for Flakes? Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate, tastes like chocolate never tasted before? The first one I remember is the woman in soft focus, with very glossy lips, a floral dress, a look similar to Kate Bush and a field of some sort of seasonal crop. Must have been the 70s. I recall the one where she was in a Ros-bath with the phone ringing and a lizard too. Anyway, much though we’d all like to think we look as erotic, sexy and gorgeous as those women when we eat a flake we know the truth is we look bloody clumsy. We end up in pretty much the same state as a toddler with a pack of chocolate buttons. There are miniscule flakes of chocolate stuck to our chin, top and cleavage. And as it is so flaky it melts upon contact with your skin leaving brown smears everywhere. It sticks to the roof of your mouth and makes you speak all funny and coats your teeth. Well croissants are like that too. They are French, which by definition should be all sophisticated, evocative of reading Sunday papers in bed with freshly squeezed orange juice and black coffee, smeared with real butter and posh marmalade but actually there is not a great deal of a croissant which makes it into your tummy, most of it either crumbles back onto the plate or ends up all down you. One has to inhale rather than consume a croissant.

I made my list of food shopping for the month and was debating with Ady whether to do it this morning or to wait until tomorrow when I came up with the idea of all of us going together to do it, you know, like a family. I need to fill two trolleys for a months food shop so I usually do half the shop, pay, load it in the car and then go and do the second half. I had visions of us pushing a trolley each, children assisting as we went round, identifying all sorts of produce from around the world, smiled indulgently at by other shoppers, two of us loading the conveyor belt while the other two packed up at the other end, waving a cheery goodbye to the checkout operator and when Ady suggested Asda it completed the vision with the four of us tapping out back pockets in the style of their tv ads as we left. We’d arrive home in time to put away the shopping before I got changed and headed off to work.

And then I woke up!

So we did indeed arrive at Asda. The first indication that we should have given up and gone home again came when the queue for the cashpoints was snaking into the carpark. There are 3 cashpoints there but one was out of order and one was working but out of cash. Scarlett came with me but hadn’t worn a coat and was shivering so I picked her up and she wriggled inside my fleece with me where she was overjoyed to be so close to me and spent time kissing me and tickling me with loud ‘I’m tickling your boobs’ comments. And actually a fleece with one blonde and one redhead appearing out of the top kissing each other probably did look faintly odd.

One of our two trolleys was the classic supermarket trolley which has a mind of it’s own. Quite literally. It had an IQ reading and everything. Except it had gotten all above it’s station and decided it didn’t actually want to be a supermarket trolley. It wanted to be bumper car. It had wheels and it was going to use them, but not for the purpose some supermarket trolley manufacturer intended. Oh no siree bob! It’s was going to use to them to escape, to leave Asda, trek across country and find it’s spiritual home in a fairground somewhere in the west country. It wanted to feel the wind in it’s wire, feel the rough ground beneath it’s wheels. It wanted rough hands to grasp it’s handle and spin out of control to the sounds of ‘scream if you want to go faster’ with the scent of cheap hotdogs and candyfloss in the air. And with every negotiation of a corner of an aisle, with every tin of value baked beans and six pint carton of milk we put in it, it expressed it’s desire to escape just a little more violently.

Ady had zoned out and was clearly spending his time in some safe and warm happy shiny place deep inside himself. Somewhere where he sat next to Gregg Wallace and drank proper alcohol and wasn’t trawling the wine aisle for the cheapest bottle of white available. Davies had regressed to some toddler state and discovered the pitch of ‘eeeeh’ just above the one where only dogs can hear you and was still audible to humans. And he chose only to communicate using this sound. ‘Which flavour Hula Hoops do you want Davies?’ ‘Eeeeeeh’

And Scarlett? She was probably the most sane of our number but has way too many characteristics of her mother, a taste for extravagance and a love of the fruit of the vine, so when not carefully monitored she was trying to load either or both trolleys with bottles of wine. Particularly of the rose variety cos she does love a bottle of pink wine does Tarly.

When we were barely half way round and I checked my watch to find it was midday I started to feel slightly disconcerted, what with me being due to start work at 1pm and all. And I tried to chivvy everyone along a little. Some ten minutes later I was barging past all sorts of other shoppers with my band of merry helpers and renegade trolley following behind me, tossing in the value toilet roll and own brand crunchy nut cornflakes. Me and the children stopped at a checkout and started loading our trolleys while Ady went off to get fruit and vegetables leaving both trolleys with us. Trolley without a cause had given up the will to be a bumper car and was quietly pondering a career with the circus. I tried, and frankly failed to organise a packing procedure based on where in the house the final destination of the goods was to be and even gave up worrying about whether things would get crushed or frozen things were going to start freezing the hula hoops by too close a proximity. Scarlett was single handedly loading the wine onto the checkout, all the while looking at the label and commenting on the vintage, Davies was continuing with his ‘EEeees’ and adding in the ocassional ‘Ummmm’ and then Ady came back with all the fruit and veg so I was able to go to the end of the till and start packing while he carried on loading. It was 12.25. The trip is possible in 15 minutes, I had my name badge in my bag and would have to live with not wearing clothes I would have chosen for work.

But I hadn’t banked on this particular checkout operator. She was no ordinary checkout operator. She had been trained by the same person as the checkout operator that Gill once had the good luck to be served by. She actually said to me ‘No rush Darlin’. I’ve learnt that there is no benefit to hurrying. My shift doesn’t go any quicker, I don’t get paid any more and there is no need to throw things down the checkout at customers.’ Wise words indeed. The sort that make you want to hug the person next to you. To start a rousing chorus of ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’ to feel the love and respect for your fellow man, the stop and admire the daisies, to hear the birds sing, the bees buzz and to take time to see all the beauty in the world around you. To nod sagely and agree that there is nothing to be gained by hurrying, no good can come of it.

Except of course getting to bloody work on time!!!

But, and reasons for this will become clear, I am SOOOO glad I didn’t say a word. So pleased that I didn’t incur her wrath by saying something like ‘well actually I’d really rather you did hurry becuase I have to be in work in 31 minutes and it is a 15 minute drive away and we still have to get these two trolleys, one of which is about to make a bid for freedom and get on it’s way to St Ives as soon as it smells fresh air across the carpark and loaded into the car along with these two children which will take at least 7 minutes by my calculations leaving me with very little margin for error, daisy smelling, birds and bees listening or the luxury of worrying about whether you put hairline cracks in my eggs by sending them whizzing down towards me a bit on the quick side.’ Instead I just smile and complimented her on her great attitude.

So we got there, we were all standing on the exit side of the tills, our two trolleys were brimming, the end was in sight, we were a full minute and a half ahead of schedule (and this was despite me being a bit crap at getting the bags to come off the bag dispenser and the checkout lady bustling out of her checkout, coming to the end and pulling off about 300 carrier bags for me to ‘help’) and then she pressed the total button. And although I looked at the total as it showed up on the screen I didn’t quite believe it until she said the words ‘That will be £217.82 please’. Which would be fine. If I didn’t only actually have £200 in my pocket. And by being a bit sensible with my loading the last few items to come through and therefore be loaded into the trolley were 10 loaves of bread at 26p a loaf, 12 lots of 6 pints of milk at less that £17 for the whole load and all the expensive things like meat and wine stashed right at the bottom of the trolleys where it was totally unfeasible to drag them out and say ‘oh just take these bits off actually, we don’t need them’.

So instead I smiled my best smile, left Ady and the children stood there, left the friendly checkout operator and the queue of people behind us, said a cheery ‘bear with me just a moment’ and dodging the crowds ran back to the cashpoints outside, joined the queue of 4 people waiting for the only machine dispensing cash and got some more money out. Ran back to the checkouts, with a face clashing horribly with my hair, handed over the extra £20 (I gave her the £200 before I ran) and then walked out with my cheery goodbye and Asda back pocket tapping just the same. Ady said the woman behind us in the queue had been all tutting and eye rolling so the checkout operator had been saying about how ‘that’s the thing about ASDA, there are just so many great things to buy you always end up getting more than you came in for!’ while he pretended not to actually know me and be one of those volunteers who accompany the care in ther community folk when they go to do their shopping while Davies made further noises and Scarlett rearranged the shopping in the trolley and the errant trolley edged further towards the exit.

Somehow we still managed to toss all the shopping into the car and get me to work with minutes, well ok seconds to spare. I regaled my colleagues with the story, apologising about my top (a black top with a massive pink bejewelled ‘Tickled Pink’ splashed across the front and jeans with lots of frayed bits (thankfully I’d not worn the pair I wore yesterday which have ‘Angus’ written across one thigh in black biro, but that’s another story!) to which my boss laughed and said ‘ah that’s fine, it doesn’t say anything offensive does it?’.

It meant the topic of conversation at work this afternoon was food shopping though, with me explaining my shop for a month and menu plan and batch cook and freeze policy. I then confessed to doing a fair bit of baking rather than buying cakes and biscuits which led them all to look at me in astonishment as some sort of sensible grown up type. I did tell them that I felt I was misleading them all rather and I felt they should know that by 9pm most evenings I am in a wine sodden heap singing James Blunt songs but I fear I have totally given them the wrong impression of me 😆

My favourite colleague F gave me a lift home (although hurrah for broad daylight at 5pm! 🙂 ) where I got a very warm welcome from the children. They both have colds so have been medicated before bed tonight. I’ve sat and cackled through back to back Cathering Tate on tv and Ady fell asleep on the sofa. I think the extremes of award ceremonies in the company of Gregg Wallace to shame at Asda was just too exhausting for him 😆

Oh, it’s all go here.