This
morning on the dog walk I walked past Waitrose at 7.40am and there
were 17 'old people' in the queue waiting for the shop to open at
8am. Now whilst I totally agree with the rules that stores should
have a designated time for the old & vulnerable to shop, I'm not
quite sure if I agree that they should all be in a queue on a
Saturday morning before the shop is even open. I know for a fact
that most of the people in this queue are also in the queue every
other day of the week. I walk past Waitrose at pretty much the same
time every morning. These so called 'old' people don't actually seem
to have got the fact that they're only supposed to go out for
essential shopping and essential doesn't mean every single day. I
have absolutely no idea what they are buying every day. One of my
neighbours, who is in her late 70s (or possibly even in her 80s)
treks off to Waitrose every single day at 8am and always returns with
two bags of shopping. What on earth is she buying every day? It
obviously can't be all fresh food because no way would her and her
husband be able to eat 2 bagfuls of fresh food in 24 hours. So I can
only guess that she is stock-piling toilet rolls & tinned food.
Or maybe her spare room is full of pasta. Lol!
I totally
understand that 'old' people like to stick to their normal routine.
Though I must admit I've always wondered why they actually need to
shop on a Saturday morning, but I'm guessing it's a throwback to when
they worked and only had the weekends to shop.
I'm very
lucky that in my local area I have a lot of shops that I can walk to.
Waitrose, M&S, Tesco Express, Sainsbury's Local, plus a couple
of bakers and zillions of coffee shops that are open for takeaway
coffees.
When lock
down was first announced my intention was to 'shop local' and not use
the car at all because I was trying to be a law abiding citizen. But
then I offered to do shopping for 'old' people so now I shop weekly
for an old lady who lives 2-3 miles away from me. She lives equal
distances away from a biggish Tesco, Morrisons and Aldi so because
Tesco was the supermarket I was most familiar with I thought I would
do her weekly shop there and also do mine at the same time. Famous
last words.
I do a
shop for her on a Wednesday morning because it was a Wednesday that I
started shopping for her and as I said earlier old people like to
have a routine. I don't do the shop at Tesco. Tesco always has a
queue right up the side of the building and around the car park.
Morrisons isn't quite as bad but there's always a queue there too.
Aldi never has a queue at the time that I go. And whereas pre-lock
down, Aldi was just a supermarket that I popped into if they had a
special offer on for say plants; now it has become my favourite shop.
I LOVE Aldi.
I know a
lot of people say you can't actually do a 'proper' shop in Aldi and
they don't have many branded items, but I'm not a snob, and because I
live by myself I can cope with not having branded goods in lock down
and adapt my shop accordingly. And the old lady that I shop for
mainly just wants fruit & yogurts & bread & milk &
stuff like that (because her daughter orders all her main meals on
line for her) so it works for me.
I actually
manage to do a whole weeks shop at Aldi so hardly ever need to pop to
the local shops to do a 'top up' shop unless I run out of
wine. Lol!
However
after talking to friends and family, essential shopping actually has
me confused about a couple of things.......................
The first
thing I don't understand is why would you stand outside a supermarket
in a massive queue when less than half a mile up the road there is
another one with no queue at all. The only reason I can think of is
that people are snobs! I was talking to my sister about this and she
said that her husband really liked 'Hagen Das' ice-cream and Aldi
didn't sell it so she couldn't do a full shop there. FFS, we're in
the middle of a major pandemic. Is what brand of ice-cream one eats
really an essential reason to be out longer than one needs to be? I
compare this to the fact that I like wine and there is a particular
type of wine that I buy from Tesco that I love. However, because I
am now shopping at Aldi I am more than happy to buy my wine at Aldi
because it saves me from going to more than one shop and by doing
that I feel I am doing my bit in helping to save lives.
The second
thing I don't really understand is the term 'essential shopping'. To
me 'essential shopping' means buying food you need to survive on for
a week. When you compare 'lock down' to rationing during the war
there is no comparison. In the war everyone had 'ration books' and
could only buy a certain amount of each thing. Now we have unlimited
access to what I would call treats. Ie, I don't need wine and my
sister's husband doesn't need Hagen Das ice-cream. But still people
feel the need to go out and buy these so called essentials when
they're not actually going out to buy 'real' essentials and so are
risking coming into contact with more people.
I have to
admit I am guilty of this. As I said above, if I run out of wine I
have no qualms about popping out to the local shop to get another
bottle. It's not essential and in my opinion, I shouldn't be doing
it. However, unlike during the war (when 'mental health' didn't seem
to be an issue), everybody just seems to be harping on about mental
health these days and saying that what is 'essential' for one person
may totally affect their mental health if they don't have access to
it. Hmmmmm.............. I'm not sure that I agree with that. I
may have to do a post about my thoughts on mental health at a later
date.
Anyway
those are my thoughts for today and now I'm off to have a
non-essential glass of wine. Cheers.
See you
all tomorrow.
Toodles.
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