Like buying Sainsburys for example. In fairness I can’t claim that one liner for my own, I have to give full due credit to the delivery driver. Of course he isn’t just a delivery driver, nosireebob! He is merely doing that to bring in a bit of extra cash while he works nights as a stand up comedian. Infact maybe he’s not even doing it to bring in the cash, maybe it is a valuable dual source of both new material (what could possibly be funnier than delivering someone else’s muller light yoghurt, organic pineapples and flash bathroom wipes?) and the chance to test out his jokes on that harshest and most discerning demographic of standup comedy critics – the bored housewife?! Hey if you can make them smile along with delivering the very shackles that keep them in the kitchen – their ingredients for cooking and their household products for cleaning, then surely you know you’re in business!
So having greeted me with ‘Hello, I’ve brought Sainsburys! Seriously, I have a food mountain out here, you bought the whole shop!’ he went on to further develop his act by talking about ‘we are a well oiled machine we’ve really got it goin’ on now’ when we set up a production line of he brings the boxes, I unload the boxes, Davies and Scarlett scatter the contents of the boxes into the relevant rooms ‘chiller! upstairs bathroom, downstairs bathroom, next to back door to go in garage’ (which put me in mind of Neil’s monologue in Young Ones – ‘we sow the seed, nature grows the seed, we eat the seed’ which shockingly I can’t find a youtube clip of). He sort of gave it up there – doesn’t do to overkill, maybe he’s one of those stand ups who lets the audience do the work themselves, just interjecting comedy ideas and letting the viewer run with them and find the laughs themselves. Or maybe he’s just not that funny. Or perhaps he was having an off day. Or something.
He arrived at 3pm precisely, I signed for the delivery at 3.10pm and by 3.50pm I’d got all the shopping put away. 60 bottles of Stella, 15 bottles of wine, 60 pints of milk and a whole load of tins, packets and jars (I like to keep the recycling van busy, just incase they don’t have secondary careers in the entertainment business and dealing with tins and bottles is their lifes work).
When we lived in Manchester and the children were tiny I often did internet food shops but we had Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys all really close to us and there were so many delivery slots you could often get a same day one booked, doing the shop in the morning and getting it delivered in the evening. I’ve not really done it since we moved back to Sussex as when we first came home you were lucky to book a delivery slot in the next three weeks (similar principle to doctors appointments) so I’m something of an amateur at it really. Of course with the next Olympics this close I’d be foolish to give up my amateur status anyway so there were a couple of glaring omissions from my delivery such as butter (I’d got the value stuff for using in baking but none of the decent stuff for spreading on toast), cashew nuts (essential ingredient in several of our meals) and cheese (staple diet here when we’re not drinking milk, wine or beer!) which I’ll have to pick up later in the week but otherwise it was a success. The only out of stock items were substitued with sensible things clearly selected by a person with a brain so it was a good first foray into the world of interent food shopping. The children were helpful and pleased not to have had to tramp round a real supermarket for the best part of two hours, so I guess we’ll be doing that again. Best part was as the order was over £70 and delivered Tuesday – Thursday it was just £2.50 delivery charge so I didn’t even begrudge that. 🙂
those poor children putting away your 5 million bottles of wine beer and milk while you stand around taking photos of them 😆
ps i’ll be having stella instead of tea next time we visit 😉
Comment by Liza — 27 February 2008 @ 5:37 pm
Glad it was a satisfactory experience! I’m in love with Ocado now – though it takes a very steady eye to avoid the temptations of Waitrose food when shopping.
Comment by Allie — 27 February 2008 @ 5:50 pm
Mind you, we could get a week’s Ocado shop for the cost of your alcohol purchases alone… (She added, rudely…) 😉
Comment by Allie — 27 February 2008 @ 5:55 pm
Are you entertaining then?
Comment by Simon — 28 February 2008 @ 9:14 am
See you in two weeks! xx
Comment by Joyce — 28 February 2008 @ 8:08 pm