So for a day when all I really did was to sit in my office overlooking an empty street (as I said our road has suddenly reverted to leafy suburbia so that’s one upside) an awful lot has happened. My good friend Matt did a mercy run and got us some eggs and fruit and frozen veg and then, to my utter astonishment… this situation has somewhat reduced my expectations which were never high to start with ) one of our delivery services came good so we now have fruit and veg. And in anticipation of it not coming good I ordered a box from another company which is coming today. So am thinking of setting up a stall on my front drive with a sign that says “ Mel’s Country Market “. And that’s why I am not sharing the name of the company that did deliver. Am planning on following Amazon’s lead and hiking up my prices. Has anybody bought anything from Amazon lately? It feels like a virtual mugging.
Meanwhile Sainsburys ( yip why let a good story line go? ) continue to be the gift that keeps on giving. Giving, but not delivering. Their CEO took the time to send out an email to all their customers explaining why they weren’t delivering to everybody. It was a very long email and in the time it must have taken him to compose and send it he could have got behind the wheel of one of their delivery vans and covered a few areas. Including mine. But, that’s not really the reason why I bring them up again. It’s because they sent me an email too which went into my junk mail ( so a least Vodafone knows what it’s doing ) and I have to share the opening line with you as it’s just so ironic ,
“ Congratulations, your post code could be chosen this week along with 10 other postcodes in the rest of the UK “ and it went on to say that I was one of 400 hundred customers who would receive one of the many prizes they are giving away. Now, that’s nice, but I wasn’t looking for a prize. Just a little old fashioned delivery although I am beginning to understand that such a thing with Sainsburys is the equivalent of the Golden Ticket in Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I thought so I took it a bit further and a wheel appeared on the screen very much like one in an old tv quiz show that I always claimed I never watched ( and now I am outed. My ex-daughter in law who is a vegetarian used to threaten to out me as a committed carnivore with the Vegetarian Society which I joined to get info and discounts on various veggie establishments around the world ). Anyway I spun the wheel and won nothing. It told me to spin again and then it told me I had won a voucher worth £1000. I was just figuring out how to spend that as I couldn’t actually buy anything from them when I started to read the conditions which seemed to say that I couldn’t activate the voucher until I had placed so many orders on line! At that point I lost the will to live but if anybody else wants to spin the wheel I am happy to forward you the email.
My friend Matt ( two mentions, so take a double bow ) also bought us two bottles of San Pellegrino. That’s great. I like and approve of San Pellegrino. When it comes to bottled water I am an absolute snob. I can’t eat a meal without a sparkling drink. Fact. All my friends know it and when I get invited for a meal ( which doesn’t happen too often and rarely occurs twice at the same house ) that they have to supply sparkling water. No matter how you dress up tap water ( nice cut-glass jug or carafe , slices of lemon or lime ) it’s still tap water. It’s come out of a tap for heaven’s sake and goodness knows what alien substances it has met on its way through the system ) And it’s boring. So, in these times of war and deprivation branded sparkling water is high on my necessities.
But, I had to anticipate a crisis. I am not a great fan of soda streams. They kind of taste too much like soda water than a proper Perrier or San Pellegrino. But, on my daughter-in law, Rachel’s advice I bought one. Looked at Amazon and daughter-in-law ( who is qualifying for some kind of daughter in law of the year award in this crisis ) told me that John Lewis was over 30 quid cheaper. So I duly ordered and chose a delivery slot ( that cost me most of my savings, but there you go ) and indeed it came today. It’s my plan B and is sitting in my garage in case the proper fizzy waters run out. But, then Rachel said I ought to buy a gas refill as you only get so many bottles out of them . Silly me, I thought it was some inexhaustible supply bubbling up from the ground in some volcanic area of Italy, or Wales or anywhere water bubbles out of the ground. There is a spring in my Cotswold village actually, now I come to think of it, but that’s there and I am here, so pretty academic.
I duly went back on line with John Lewis to order. Out of stock. Went on line with Amazon Out of stock. So I may end up with no functional soda stream, no decent sparking water and sticking a Mento chewy sweet or two into the tap water to see if I can make it fizz. I’m trying very hard not to lower my standards, but it may come to that.
Friends ( who drink tap water… yes I do know people like that ) say you can’t tell the difference between one sparkling water or another. I remember Michael Winner in his Sunday Times column being even pickier than me. I think Highland Spring was his pet hate, but I think that’s ok though nothing really beats the sparkling fruit flavoured waters from Marks and Spencer or ( reminiscing here ) Sainsburys.
Having to drink tap water was one of the reasons I gave up eating school lunches after a week at my Grammar School. That and having to scrape what you’d left on the plate into a huge plastic bowl of left overs. That’s also why the few friends who ever invite us over to dinner know not to scrape the remains left on one plate on to another ad infinitum. Or at least until I retch. I’ve even been known to leap to my feet at the end of each course and clear the table carefully piling the plates one on top of the other just to avoid the scraping process
My dear friend Jeff in Ireland, he of the double vision problem ( who to my amazement is reading this…. he’s a literary snob although he has given me a very good quote about blog writers which I can only use if I give him credit, but I am saving that for a quiet news day ) stopped the lunches the same time I did. He’s even fussier about his food than am I. It’s that only Jewish child syndrome. Any mothers of eligible girls reading this take my wife’s advice and don’t let your daughter marry one. It’s not for nothing that she is known as St Marilyn of Southgate.
Jeff and I had to sit at a separate table eating our sandwiches prepared by our doting mothers to our exact specifications. Never anything with a pickles in for Jeff. Never anything with a skin, a rind or pips for me ( I did tell warn you ) Anyway that’s when we met LV. I was asked for more of my school recollections and this is one I can never forget. LV’s real name was Robinson. We are talking 1956 on here and the war had only been over for 11 years but if LV had spoken with a German accent and was on the list of Nazi War Criminals neither of us would have been surprised. We were his targets from the moment he saw us. He stole our food every day, threatened us unless we gave him some of our pocket money and his particular joy was in kicking our thermos flasks ( yes we brought our own drinks too. Mine was always filled with Lucozade ) all around the room until you could hear the glass rattle inside. Before I got wise to what the result of the kicking was I once crunched my way through a glass of Lucozade with the added zest of the broken inside of the thermos. You may wonder why we called him LV . It stood for “ Limited Vocabulary “ as every word this shambling, faux-Aryan goon spoke was “ effing this “ and “ effing that “ I do occasionally wonder what became of him .He probably changed his looks and name and became a day-time tv presenter.
So, we all dutifully went and clapped the NHS Those of us who didn’t created their own NHS ( No Hand Show ). Someone in our neighbourhood also let off fireworks. Not sure if it was my imagination or not but thought I heard the sirens of ambulances taking minor burn victims to the nearest A&E. So, more pressure on the NHS which probably wasn’t the main purpose of the exercise. 94 year old Isabella came to her door and dutifully joined in the applause though I was a bit concerned that she, like everybody else might have got hypothermia to add to the woes of the NHS. She told us yesterday that as she gets so many mentions that she wants a fee. I offered her a co-production credit and that’s my final word on the subject.
I am being deluged by readers asking for credits. Our friend in Seapoint, in South Africa suggested I follow up my “ How to Compalin “ book ( that’s another one you can get on Amazon and Kindle by the way ) and turn all these into a book at then end. Given that the end may be some way off it could turn out to be as thick a volume as Hilary Mantle’s latest. 888 pages. Hope not.
I’ve had good feedback on Sam’s blog. It’s generally regarded as better than mine and I won’t argue with that. Hope you all liked the pic of Wanda yesterday ( thanks techie daughter in law again…. What a gem )
Let’s end on a cheery note (well I aim to make the whole blog cheery and my darker pieces of humour tend to get edited out by my censors). I get loads of texts and What’s App Messages as do we all. Credit to Simon Goulden for sending me the Ladybird guide to the virus. Check it out. And to my friend Franny who said this morning “ Beautiful day, carbon neutral. And it’s Friday. What could be better than that? “ No need for anyone to answer . I suspect it was rhetorical. But more of that positive attitude from everybody wouldn’t come amiss.
Am sure tomorrow will bring it’s own challenges and enough to fill yet another blog. So, take care, be healthy, have a peaceful Sabbath and see you all Saturday night or Sunday Morning…great title for a film or a movie that.