Hunt The Onions

Arghhh Sainsbury’s. I have my lunchtime shopping trip down to a fine art. I can bomb around Sainsbury’s in around twenty minutes and get a week’s shopping for home and a week’s lunches for work in one go. Then of course there’s the twenty minute wait in the checkout queue as you listen to the operator gossiping to the customer in front of you but that’s another story. When will they introduce a fast lane for people in their lunch hour?

'Sorry', the checkout girl says, ‘are you in your lunch hour?’ and then immediately starts scanning everything really quickly which obviously doesn’t help as I disappear under a week’s worth of bread.

Anyhow twenty minutes is how long the actual shopping takes, unless of course L throws me a ‘googly’ by asking for something I don’t usually get. Which today she does in the form of Pot Noodles for Son’s lunches. We’ve been trying to get him to have a more healthy lunch. So we’ve weaned him off the burgers and sausages and onto, ermm... Pot Noodles. Result! Not. Anyhow, last time I bought a Pot Noodle was about fifteen years ago and Sainbury’s have probably moved them to another aisle by now, so finding them took some time but actually they’ve moved everything this week. So my ‘actual’ shop takes twice as long and I have to give up on some of the items I want. Some seem to have disappeared completely. So I spend far less money than usual in their store. So what a good idea that was Sainbury’s. Another way to reduce your takings. Expect a profit warning from the stock market any time soon.

I’m not the only one a touch miffed either. Other people doing the same sort of lunch hour shop look ready to punch the nearest assistant.

‘Look this is a supermarket isn’t it?’ one chap asks the assistant.

‘Yes sir it is’

‘So I KNOW you sell onions, don’t you?’

‘Yes sir we do’

‘Well they were there last week’, he points, ‘so where the (insert expletive) have you hidden them this week?’

When I was 18, I thrilled to be allowed to vote and eagerly went off to do so, despite not really knowing who to vote for. We live in a democracy, and even if it’s not a very good one, we should be grateful for that fact and we should all therefore exercise our democratic right to vote. I have never not voted.

As a student I knew a chap who disagreed with all the parties then and probably still does now, even he voted, drawing a line through all the parties and writing 'no suitable candidate' or less polite words to that effect. Then when the results were announced, including the number of spoilt papers, he could proudly say one of those was his. At University we had a better option; we used to have 'RON' on the ballot paper. ‘RON’ stood for 'Re-open Nominations'. If ‘RON’ won, the election had to take place again. I rather liked that idea.

Sometimes it's difficult to vote and I suppose it’s a democratic right not to vote but apathy is no answer. Not voting is simply a vote for the ‘Status Quo’, and nobody wants Francis Rossi in charge, ha ha, sorry. Low turn outs never resolve anything, nothing is ever achieved by doing nothing and if you play your cards right you can come away with a free pen.

Today, less than a week into his 19th year, Son doesn't vote. Meanwhile the Government are on about lowering the voting age to 16 to give teenagers a voice. Any point?

Post work, I head over to Derby and training for MD. He does rather well and isn’t as distracted as last week when he chased the cat. He is distracted naturally, a lot, but it’s still an improvement.

L joins us and walks Doggo along the canal, then we reconvene at home and crack open the wine.