Shopping

The problems in America? It’s got to be the food.

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It’s enough to turn anybody crazy. The things they eat over there get more and more extreme. I follow this site where the delightful Betty reviews food that she seems to buy from someone called Trader Joe.

Whatever next?

I have this vision of Joe in a large shed somewhere ( I’m keen on sheds as a place to be creative ) thinking “What can I put out there that will tickle their taste buds and send me laughing all the way to the bank?”.

Here are some recent gems from Joe:
Turkey Bacon. Great idea, lets get all the grim bits of that old turkey and press it until it looks like bacon and then get the road roller to flatten it so it resembles strips of bacon. No Joe! Bacon is bacon.

Organic Roasted Teriyaki Seaweed snack, what’s not to like? Well everything really Joe.

Shredded Cheese Blend. ” What if they think of buying cheese in a block, say three types, and then mixing it together Joe?” They’ll never think of that will they?

Coffee Flour. Made from dried and ground coffee cherry husks and husk skins. I kid you not, this is for real as they say. You know when you go to a coffee shop and the barista person knocks all those old coffee grounds out of the filter thingummy into a bin. Well Joe has been in there and knows how to monetise this stuff. Put it in flour. You’ll be delighted to know that it has limited production.

I was begining to think that we’d reached the nadir of foolishness when Betty posted something about Butter Lettuce. I’m pleased to report that they don’t put butter on the lettuce. It’s tempting to think that they do but it’s a type.

All these things might just be the tip of the iceberg.

Last on my list is Joe’s Beefless Ground Beef. If it’s beefless it’s not beef, so how come thay can call it beef if it’s not. This is not fake news, rumours to the contrary are groundless.

Eating any of this stuff is likely to make you trump. Hopefully they’ll find an antacid that will solve the problem.

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Dooley Rumble: Grumble

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dooleyrumblegrumble343It’s what I’m good at and this week have done more than my fair share. Buying some light shades on the internet ( I can almost hear you saying it serves you right ) and here they are. Climbing the ladder to fit them to the light I discover that they don’t fit. Shade frame too big to fit the light fitting fixture, I’ll soon fix that. There’s one of those gizmos that make it wider so it will fit on one of my other lights, conveniently forgetting that when I take that off, the old light will be unfit for use.

There’s a moment when you’ve bought something where you think: this is alright, I like it. Then a mere nano second or two later you can feel the doubt coming over the horizon. They do seem a bit bigger than I thought. They are a bit heavy, turns into ” not quite what I expected” and when the old fitting and the replacement one fails then the ire rises and Mr Grumbly can be heard rumbling into the room. Is there not something in the packaging that tells you what to do, comes the voice of reason, with added edge to the tone.

Scrabble, tear, look, nope! Nothing in here.

” I’ll email them and ask them what they will do about it”….

No response to the email.

I’ll ring this number here that is customer services…” we are experiencing a high volume of calls….”

That’s it, they are going back!

Here’s where this tale just gets silly. The company are almost impossible to get in touch with, so what to do? There’s nothing for it but to use the Twitter button. It would appear that all customer service is based around Twitter these days. Within 2 hours I have the means to send the bleeding things back to where they came from. I’ll not embarass them further by naming them here but their address is Dooley Rumble.

It’s in Great Blakenham, which is what this is, a bloody great blakenham that has turned into a bad tempered dooley rumble.They try to rescue the situation by sending me 2 free postage labels and send me the same one twice so when I trudge to the post office to send them back, I have to pay to send back one of them. Paying to send back:what I don’t want.

Mr Grumbly is now cranked up to full power. I’ll ask themto pay for the postage. They rescue aforementioned situation yet again by offering a £30-00 voucher to buy something else. Now the challenge of finding something that costs just £30-00 on their site that I like, and that will fit, that will not involve a round trip to Twitter , the Post Office and back.

Anyone know a good lighting shop?

 

 

 

Adult cereal and leg of salmon.

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Meandering into the Northgate branch of Gloucester’s Sainsbury some years ago, this friendly supermarket unlike it’s big faceless brother on the other side of town, catered for the city centre folk. Not exactly ‘trolley full big spenders’ but loyal nevertheless.

It was obvious from the quaver in her voice that this was Tracie’s first ‘go’ on the tannoy to announce the deal of the day. She was approaching it with all the trepidation of an ‘x’ factor finalist. Speaking to her mum that morning she said she was a little nervous, more accurately she said ” Oooer Mam am bricking it!” “Oh you’ll be alright our Trace “, her Mum said back reassuring the poor thing by saying ” no one listens to that stuff anyway”.

You could hear her breathing before her first big lines, supplied no doubt by the manager with a sly wink at his colleagues he handed the script to Trace and said, as if the script was perfectly normal: Don’t forget the bit about “Thank you for shopping at Sainsbury”

Going for it big time the announcement commenced, Trace’s voice was perfectly modulated until the last three words of the main script:

“Today’s special offer is Leg of Salmon”

and then, with some off mike sounds in the background and barely a whisper ” Thank you for shopping at Sainsbriz”

Leg of Salmon was delivered with just a little lack of confidence. I noticed it and burst out laughing. No one else really took it in, some of Gloucester’s population may well be under the misapprehension that leg of salmon exists, but the manager and script writer were perfectly aware of what they’d done to the script. As he passed me with a broad grin on his face I asked him if he could direct me to the salmon in question. ” It’ll make a change from browsing through the adult cereal ” I told him. ” Did you find anything ‘special’?” he asked me still sniggering.

“Well nothing as special as leg of salmon” I replied.

adult-cereal

This is a true story, just some names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The price of blasted courgettes…

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Here he goes again talking about the price of food. I really do not grumble all the time, honestly. Here’s a gem spotted in my local supermarket in the “no added anything section”. By the looks of it it’s just a bit of courgettes spiralized and blasted, and then put into the regulation ‘no-fun’ packaging.

As someone once said to me about my own work ” Who buys this stuff? ” At the time I was able to say ” quite a few people actually”.

Let’s make one thing clear though, courgettes do not make pasta. They are a watery green vegetable with not a lot of taste. At this rate we’ll all be having radishes for breakfast.

That is £90-00 per kilo you are looking at there, and that’s on special offer.

And I thought they ate croissants.

couregetti-nests

£3-50 for a loaf of bread?

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I’m always going on about prices with my kids, and my present visit to London is no exception. I’m staying in an area that was years ago, known as the haunt of gangsters and criminals and these days the only thing that I’ve seen that is remotely criminal is the price of a loaf of bread. With it comes the sort of look from the hipster server that says to you: ” We weren’t expecting your type in here, if you walk a few miles in that direction you’ll find a Gregg’s”

Genuine Sourdough bread made from the original recipe that’s from San Francisco is just one of the delicacies on offer. I choose a smaller loaf that is described as Granary and is about the size of a London brick, so not massive. “That will be £3-50 please Sir” comes the response. I grit my teeth and mutter and give them the gimlet eye that says: ” I hope it’s worth it”

It is.

I went back today for another one happy to pay the going rate for what I thought was one of the best breads I’ve tasted for years.It was coming to the end of their day and they had just a few left. ” You can have two for the price of one now Sir” says hipsterman in black behind the counter. “Result!” I say to myself and head to the door with my prizes in the bag. Two loaves for just £1.75 each, I mutter to myself and then muse that I’d have probably baulked at that price just a few days ago for just one loaf. For heaven’s sake I’d better get a grip while there’s time left.

New improved recipe? What’s that all about? One sees it on many food items and it brings to mind the following. If you’ve been buying the product for years then the recipe is fine, it cannot be improved. So leave it alone.

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Heckmondwike, the consequences…

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A gathering of tea cups or mugs, unwashed. Left in a place of work, the collective noun is as we all know by now a ‘heckmondwike’. But the consequences of such a thing when dishwashers are present is even more aggravating and confirms my dislike of these infernal machines.

I’ve already gone on about how unsociable they are, but with the possibility of a ‘heck’ ( one is allowed to shorten the noun when in common parlance ) there comes the likelihood of a ‘oswaldtwistle‘, or more commonly the shortened version a ‘twistle’. As anyone with any knowledge of English will know this is the word used for retrieving a dirty mug from a dishwasher when there are none left in the vast store cupboard that normally holds at least twenty to try and minimise the risk. It also means ‘ a very bad turn of mood’ like when a spotty oik assistant in a shop ignores you when looking at mobile phone and heads for the chap next to you who’s just walked in. The wheeling of a mobile shopping bag guarantees that this  spotty oik will deem you completely invisible. Hence the phrase on the return of a shopping trip with aforementioned mobile shopping bag: “I dropped into Carphone Warehouse to see if they would give me an upgrade on my iPhone 6 for something even more expensive and the oik ignored me completely and talked to some young bloke about how cool the iPhone 4 was. I got into a right twistle, and stomped out.

I’ve a liking ,which is obvious from the last couple of posts, to making up new meanings from place names. The inspiration is a book called the Meaning of Liff which was written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, the former the writer of Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the latter a humorist who does lots of stuff on Radio 4. The book was published years ago and to me is their finest work. Seek it out and enjoy. I’ve done my own version recently which is based on Gloucestershire place names only and is called “Glossary”. I’ll be posting extracts and drawings from it over the coming months. The drawing has been posted before but it bears repeating, if you’ve seen it before then calm down, no need to get into a twistle, there will be a brand new drawing in the next postinginvisible

Planning gone potty.

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markethall

Another, and this the last observation, from my trip to Newport. They have a wonderful covered market hall with almost nothing in it. Down the road they appear to be building the biggest most nondescript shopping place with this gem just a few yards away. For crying out loud what a waste. Have the planners and architects not got the wit to refurbish this place in their plans. It’s not dead but it’s dying on it’s feet and will probably be killed off for good when “Blandland” opens down the road. They’ve done similar things in Gloucester where the indoor market is much better than this poor creature but still needs some real tlc. They’ve also built a shopping ‘experience’ in Gloucester too, with marble floors imported from China ignoring local craftsmen and building methods. It’s an experience you’ll be happy to miss.

There’s something wrong with the state of planning and building, and with local authorities for allowing this to happen.

Perhaps this local Newport sculpture is of the planners, not a party I’d want to go to.

whataparty

Invisible from here.

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Invisible from here.

I’ve found a way of disappearing almost completely from sight. I live in the centre of a reasonably large town and like to shop in the town without making my arms any longer than they need be by carrying heavy bags. So I bought a shopping bag on wheels.
All of a sudden I’ve become completely invisible, that’s me on the left of the drawing. Not there? Yes I am but your not looking at me. You ‘re looking at the shopping trolley and thinking this is some old geezer who I will not bother giving my flyers to, I’ll not bother to accost to sign up for charitable donations ( believe me they are chugger: charity mugger proof ). Yes the shopping trolley turns me into the invisible man.
Now I’m not that old and I try to look presentable when wandering the local streets, I’m also i.t. savvy! I know about all sorts of things, I can find my way around most computers and I’m an apple mac devotee. There was a time when I even bought magazines with pictures of them and whistled to myself at the power of these beasts. Look at the ‘ram’ on that one I’d say to my wife. She treated me and the comment as if I had a shopping trolley behind me. In this case quite right too. I’ve got over it.
But now when I wander into a techie shop ( in a moment of weakness ) with my trolley, and a reasonable amount of spending power, he looks over my shoulder to see if there’s someone younger and poorer to chat about computers with.
Worse, if I should enter a mobile phone shop, I have the feeling that they might calls security to get me out of there ( or at least my shopping trolley ‘cos they can’t see me ) as it might make there place look at little less than ‘cool’.