Supermarket Broom Hunt and Blustery Weather

(Friday)The wind and cold continues. I just hope it doesn't come back stronger than ever. They have said on the weather forecast on BBC Breakfast this morning that we can expect more extreme weather, so it's a matter of 'batten down the hatches' once more. More like, tie down your wheeley bins, as they have a habit of moving when the wind is strong!

I went to Morrison's this morning. I'm looking for a broom so I can sweep the floor of the flat. How difficult is it to find a suitable broom for this job in Milton Keynes? You would think it would be relatively easy to find such a broom. I looked in Sainsbury's the other day, but no luck. You can buy a brush on a sort of long handle with a pan to collect what you've swept up, but I don't want one because I already have a dustpan and brush. I thought, if I go on line and have a look at Morrison's website I can check this out and I also want some superglue to fix on the handle of the trolley I bought on Amazon, which arrived yesterday morning, along with two books I'd ordered. The thing was easy enough to put together, except the bar which is for pushing it around has the screw holes in the wrong place and it wouldn't fit together, so I thought that superglueing it would be sufficient. I also looked for this on the Morrison's website, and there it was. Which is why I went to their branch near Milton Keynes station.

I got to Morrison's, parked the car, went up on the travelator (which, up to the point I arrived at the foot off wasn't operating, until a man came along and took away the barrier and the thing began to move. It amuses me that it moves slowly up until the point you step on it and then it moves a good deal faster.) When I arrived on the shop floor and approached the trolley park, I discovered that you now had to insert a £1 coin in order to use a trolley. Previously they didn't need a coin. I went back to the car and put the bags back in the back of the car and returned to the store and had a look for the broom and superglue and then changed my mind and decided to go to the cashpoint outside the store to take out a £10 note and then went back inside to get it changed into coins at the kiosk and began my walk around the store. Enough food to keep me going for at least two or three weeks. I found the basic brush for a broom, but there was no handle! As for the superglue, no sign, which was annoying, since I had come into Morrison's with the intention of finding and buying these items. What on earth is the use of the brush without the handle? It's not a broom until it has said handle.

I next thought was, find a member of staff and ask about the broom-handle. Surely a staff member would be able to tell me where I could get the handle to attach to the aforementioned brush? I saw a lady stacking shelves, but she moved further away when I spoke. Perhaps she didn't hear me, but I eventually caught up with her and asked about the handle. The lady said that she had wanted to buy a broom herself and found there was no matching handle and had mentioned this to the store manager and told me I would be better off going to the nearby Range store, which was a bit off, considering she was telling me to go elsewhere to buy a broom. So, on leaving Morrison's, I went directly to The Range, which is almost immediately across the road from Morrison's, in Winter Hill. I was somewhat surprised to see a large sign up on the outside of the building which houses The Range, emblazoned with the name Iceland and then, on entering the store, finding that to one end there is indeed an Iceland, taking up a considerable amount of space. I found a broom! Eurika! And after walking the length of the store, a tube of superglue, and with these finds firmly grasped in my hand, I went to pay at the till. I made the passing comment to the lady on the till about the near impossibility of finding a broom. I said that perhaps there was a convention of witches who had bought them all up, which got a laugh, and she said she knew a few witches, not, I'm sure, real, but I said I had worked with one or two, not giving names, but, again, it got a laugh, so at least it made someone smile and made their day.  So, mission complete, I returned home and then took Alfie out for a further walk. It has become fairly blustery, even more than it was earlier and we walked around Oldbrook Green and then returned home.

Christmas Over-Kill

I went out early to get my hair cut at my usual hairdresser's, Essential Barbers, in Monkston Park. As they open for business at 9.30 I arrived in good time and was inside the shop as soon as they opened up and was in the seat and having my hair cut almost immediately and was done and dusted within 30 minutes and then driving home. 

The mad Christmas dash is well and truly underway. Carol thought she had someone coming to visit this morning, but during the morning realised it was tomorrow, so we went out with the intention of having a coffee and something to eat in The Range and a good excuse to browse. As we turned into the estate at Winter Hill, where The Range is situated, I was followed by this inconsiderate individual who expected me to speed up within the estate. He drove as near as he could behind we and got quite aerated because I wouldn't do what he wanted. We went right into The Range Carpark and he went left into Bunning's carpark so why get so annoyed when he was going to be turning off within seconds? Some people just have no patience and expect to have the road entirely to themselves and really don't like the idea of someone else getting in their way. Crazy!

Not many parking spaces left in the carpark. Walking in through the front door of the store we were greeted by every conceivable type of Christmas tree lights, flashing, non-flashing and in between, pulsing, and glowing madly. Then, going up in the escalator we were greeted by two obscenely over-eager Father Christmas figures, which began singing horribly, certainly enough to give any child nightmares. Swaying about madly, and totally scary. An endless range of Father Christmas figures lined the outer edge, giving the impression of a sort of mad convention of the characters. Over-kill definitely.

The whole of the upstairs floor in The Range taken over by Christmas decorations. An aisle full of twinkly decorations that play music, but none very tuneful as they weren't in harmony with one another. Also, we found a row of interactive characters, sort of Santa's helpers, little green-and-red clad elves. You press the button on their hands and they play a Christmas song, but, being us, with a sense of fun, we have to set off a whole selection of them, a total cacophony. We did this in a store at Westcroft a couple of Christmases ago, where each figure set of the next figure, as they interacted with each other. It caused a great deal of amusement for not only ourselves but other shoppers!

Good to see we're helping the Chinese economy ticking over nicely for yet another year. Almost all of this Christmas stuff will be made in China or at least somewhere in the East. Not that I'm knocking their ability to take so many of our jobs. But I can imagine much of it being made in sweatshops and the staff working for a pittance and probably having absolutely no idea what a Christmas elf of glass bauble for a tree is and then packed up and loaded into several vast containers and then onto a ship and then sent across the sea to be sold in these places. And then, after the Christmas rush is over, returned to some vast warehouse and the following year sold at vastly reduced prices.

We then went to the café and had intended ordering paninis and coffee. Actually not a bad little place to eat, but there was a long queue and the man on the till didn't seem to know how to do his job and it was him fiddling about which was causing the queue. He had no idea how to operate the till. Just the company's lack of training which was obviously behind this. We eventually got our lattes and what looked like chocolate cake and sat and ate it. Not particularly nice, it was partly chocolate and partly some sort of mauve-coloured cake. Over-priced and not worth the effort

Carol bought a fish tank as she wants to get an aquarium, which we bought along with gravel and water treatment. We will have to leave the buying of the fish for another day, perhaps in Dobbie's or Frost's garden centres. We went home and she set up the tank, putting the water treatment in the water as it takes 24 hours before you can put any fish in.

Coming out of the store we saw a couple in a car in front of us who'd obviously had an almighty row. It looked as if he was sulking because she wanted to go Christmas shopping and he didn't. The body-language said it all. He drew up in their car and she got out and he drove off in a right mood and almost hit someone crossing the carpark with a load of shopping. Oh dear, if that's the effect Christmas has on people, is it really worth all the bother and stress? Surely not. Perhaps the musical and discordant decorations we saw upstairs in the store were a sort of symbol of this sort of total disharmony of the shoppers (or at least, some of them.) So much for it being a season of peace and happiness to all men (and women.)

Heavy Rain

It's been fairly sunny and warm for the past few days. As I write this the sun is out. We went to Bunnings, the new D.I.Y. store in Winter Hill, Milton Keynes. It was Homebase but they were taken over by this company.  Sainsbury's took over the company who owned Homebase and Argos and presumably sold on Homebase to Bunnings, which I had never heard of this company but it's no surprise really as it's an Australian company and have only recently opened stores in this country. We just had to go and have a look and I must say I'm quite impressed from what I've seen. They have a cafe which Homebase didn't have. When we were there we heard this most amazing sound and could't work out what it was. It turned out to be the heaviest rainstorm and the sound was the rain on the roof of the building. Absolutely pelting down when we walked into the garden area where they were handing out umbrellas to customers.

We drove the short distance to The Range which is just over the road from Bunnings. Carol needed the loo so we went upstairs. On the way in we had to pass a display of hallowe'en rubbish. The usual crass stuff, stupid grinning skulls with bright red lights for eyes and some of the most pathetic ghoulish stuff imaginable. I can't believe people want to buy such stuff, but I suppose companies know that people will buy anything such as this. It's amazing how they start putting this stuff out for sale earlier and earlier each year. The we saw Christmas decorations. We went to Frost's at Woburn Sands yesterday and they had a lot of Christmas stuff already on sale, most of it tat. Lots of space being made for all this stuff. We went upstairs on the escalator at The Range and for some reason we noticed that as you got on the thing it got faster. Did I imagine it? I don't think so. More Christmas stuff upstairs which we attempted to ignore. We had a good browse around the store and looked in particular at the range of Regatta clothing, for example, decent fleeces at good prices which interested me. We would have gone back to the car but at that moment the heavens opened and the rain fell again. We just risked getting a real soaking as we ran to the car in the carpark and drove out. Unfortunately there was an huge queue of cars coming in and out of the road back onto the grid road and it took a long time to get out of Winter Hill.