dormouse1953: (Default)
I was unpacking my basket on to the conveyor belt in Tesco this morning and chatting with the woman on the checkout about the large amount of groceries I had. "I'm baking a cheesecake this weekend," I explained. And then, "Damn! I forgot the cheese!"

Fortunately, there was no-one else behind me at the checkout and she allowed me to dash up to the cheese aisle and grab a couple of packs of Philadelphia.

Afterwards, I looked at my shopping list and realised I'd copied all the ingredients from the recipe - apart from the cheese.
dormouse1953: (Default)
No queuing at Tesco this morning, either going in or at the checkouts. I was in and out in under half an hour.

And there was pasta. Couldn't get any plain flour, though. (I got some white bread flour last week.)
dormouse1953: (Default)
As I was walking to Tesco this morning, I got to the A3 where I had to turn to get to the stairs down to the subway under it. As I looked back towards my house I noted a couple of people standing among the trees between the A3 and the houses. They were some distance away, but the woman was wearing a long white dress. It looked like a wedding dress. The man was using a camera.

I assume a wedding cancelled due to the current situation but she had the dress so she decided on a photo-shoot. The trees were all in blossom, and from some angles they would have got Guildford cathedral as a backdrop. (Which also had a walk-on part in the 1976 film The Omen.)

There was a queue when I got to Tesco but it more or less evaporated as I joined it. 45 minutes later I walked back home and the couple were still there.

Tesco again

Apr. 9th, 2020 11:41 am
dormouse1953: (Default)
For the first time since this all started, there was a queue to get into my local Tesco. In fact, I didn't notice it when I got there but the queue went all along the south side of the building (the entrance is on the west side) and then along two further sides of the car park, so the end of the queue was nearly at the entrance to the car park where I came in.

There's always one. Just as I was getting near the entrance, a woman approaching from the north totally failed to spot the queue and went to go in the entrance, where she was stopped by staff. To be fair to her, three people standing two metres apart before the queue turned the corner out of sight does not look much like a queue.

The person on the checkout reckoned they were busier because of the Bank Holiday weekend approaching. I can't see how that makes any difference at the moment, but as someone on Cix pointed out, what has logic got to do with it.

Most of the shelves seemed well stocked and I got everything I was after.
dormouse1953: (Default)
Tesco probably had more people around than last week, but no queues and more stuff on the shelves.

I was able to get some bratwurst, so currywurst for me this weekend. I might not be getting out much, but I can at least still enjoy myself.
dormouse1953: (Default)
I got a text from Boots telling me my prescription was ready. Then I heard people talking about four-hour queues at pharmacies around the country. Not sure what to expect, I walked into Guildford town centre this morning. Very eery. Almost totally deserted. Malls and shops closed.

And Boots? Also totally deserted. There was a bored guy on the pharmacy counter who immediately found my prescription. He checked my address and post code but didn't ask me to sign for it. Next visit due in eight weeks.
dormouse1953: (Default)
So I've just been to Tesco. Apart from putting the wheelie bin out Monday and bringing it back in Tuesday, that's the first time I've left the house since this time last Thursday.

Spring has arrived. The path to Tesco is lined with flowers. The sun was shining. I was getting quite warm (and not a fever, either). But the path was almost empty, even emptier than a normal Sunday.

And Tesco was a lot quieter than this time last week. Almost no queues at the check-outs. They were operating one operator per two person check-out station, so half the number of check-outs operational, but no big queues like last week.

Yes, a lot of the shelves were empty, but not totally. There was actually washing-up liquid this week. Not my normal type, but I got some. There were eggs. Again, not my normal type. There was fresh meat. There were potatoes and fresh fruit. There were no four-pint milk cartons, so I had to buy two two-pint.

But getting enough for a whole week only just fit into my two shopping bags. Maybe next week I'll see if I can find my old rucksack.

Spooky

Nov. 3rd, 2018 12:00 pm
dormouse1953: (Default)
 Some years ago I visited the battlefield of Waterloo.  In the bookshop in the visitors' centre I found a book (in English) about the Napoleonic Wars.  I paid for it by credit card.  The price was in Euros, of course, but I was amused to discover that with the current conversion rate, when I received the credit card bill the price was £18.15.

Yesterday I went to see the new film Peterloo, set mostly four years after Waterloo.  Today I did some shopping in Tesco.  The bill came to £18.19!

(Incidentally, despite what they've been saying about how no-one learns about Peterloo at school, I definitely remember hearing about it in history lessons.)

Timing

Feb. 16th, 2017 11:15 am
dormouse1953: (Default)
I decided this week I needed a new notebook laptop.  So I looked around and found something I liked on Amazon and ordered it Wednesday morning.  When I placed the order, it said it would be delivered either Friday or Saturday, and yesterday evening I received an e-mail that it had been dispatched and was due tomorrow, Friday.

So, I was working on my desktop computer just now and an e-mail notification arrived.  It was due today.  Thirty seconds later, the doorbell rang.  One new laptop.
dormouse1953: (Default)
Well the CD sold by the seller who was not Amazon arrived this morning, two weeks in advance of the estimated arrival time.  I wonder if the inflated delivery date was just arse-covering.

I've just got an e-mail telling me the other CD, the one sold by Amazon, has just been dispatched, expect it by next Sunday.  However, as it was sold by Amazon, it was available from Amazon music as a download if you buy the CD, so I've already listened to it.

Snail mail

Oct. 10th, 2016 01:44 pm
dormouse1953: (Default)
Just bought a couple of CDs from Amazon.  Although they are both released on the same label, it seems they are being dispatched from two different sellers.  An hour or so later, I received an e-mail saying that one of them (symphonies by Havergal Brian) has been dispatched and it will be arriving on 26th October.

That's over two weeks away!  I wondered if it was being delivered from somewhere deep in Europe or the US, but the seller's address is Watford.  I don't think even a snail would take two weeks to get from Watford to Guildford.
dormouse1953: (Default)
I received an Amazon voucher for my birthday so I logged on to order the second part of Philip Dwyer's biography of Napoleon, having bought the first half some years ago.

As usual, there were a number of recommendations on the home page.  The first live of recommendations were due to my having purchased Just Kids, a memoir by Patti Smiith, which my brother wanted for Christmas a while back.  Now, I know that if I'd selected the "This is a gift" option, it wouldn't give me these recommendations.

But what was bizarre was that all the recommendations were for boxes of camera film, apart from one which was for a negative file.

Can anyone tell me the connection?  Has someone done some sort of trick on Amazon to set up this connection?

Worrying

Jun. 3rd, 2015 10:45 am
dormouse1953: (Default)
When I got home from a visit to Tesco just now, there was a helicopter hovering overhead.  Right overhead.  As I went to open my front door, I realised it was directly above me.  I entered the house and it went away.

Obviously They were waiting for me to come home.  I wonder what happens next.
dormouse1953: (Default)
So I was walking to Tesco just now and I saw a Routemaster bus going down the A3.  According to its destination board, it was a number 21 going to Moorgate.  Moorgate is about fifty miles away in the opposite direction.
dormouse1953: (Default)
I was working on my computer a couple of days ago and I heard the phone ring.  I let the answer machine pick up and I heard a voice.  But when I got to the phone, it was obviously a recorded message.  Full text was something like, ",,,press 2.  If you are the named person, press 1 otherwise press 2.  Sorry there appears to be a problem."

I have caller ID on my phone, which just showed "International".  However, there is a separate caller ID device that BT were giving away before I got my current phone and that showed a number.

The number called back later but when I picked up the phone I got a dead line.

Then I got several more "press 2" messages on my answer machine over the next couple of days.  http://whocallsme.com/ didn't have the number listed.  Another came through this morning while I was hoovering and I hadn't heard the phone ring.  So I phoned the number.

It was Habitat.  I had ordered something from them through Homebase in Guildford on Monday and they were trying to arrange a delivery date.  They have now given me a date.  They are supposed to phone me back nearer the date.  I hope they use a human to do it.
dormouse1953: (Default)
(Nothing to do with their financial black hole.)

I was doing some shopping just now and I passed a young woman in the aisles and something about her caught my eye.  She appeared to be wearing an off-white overcoat.  It had been raining earlier and lots of shoppers were wearing coats.  Then I realised this wasn't a coat, it was a dressing gown.  Then I looked again and noticed that the t-shirt and checked trousers she appeared to be wearing were actually pyjamas.

My first thought was that she was a student taking student idleness to a new extreme, but when I got to the check-out she was at one of the other queues, near enough for the check-out assistant to notice her but far enough away for her to discuss this person with one of the other assistants without being heard by her.  They had noticed that she was wearing a dressing on one arm and guessed she was a patient from the near-by hospital.  They objected to her walking around thus not on grounds of decency - she was wearing clothes more covering than many women wear nowadays - but on grounds of hospital hygiene.  They thought it wrong for her to be walking around in Tesco and then to bring germs back to the hospital.  (My thoughts are that that is true of anyone walking in and out of a hospital, not just people in pyjamas.)
dormouse1953: (Default)
I have a standard lamp in my living room with a reading lamp attached.  When I switched the reading lamp on the other night, the bulb blew.  No problem; I always keep a few spare bulbs.

However, it was the last bulb in the box, so I put replacement bulbs on my shopping list.  The box was Tesco brand, and as I was going to Tesco this morning, I noted the type - GU10, 50W.  When I got to the bulb section, I couldn't see the boxes of four I got last time so I looked for other packs of this type.  At the very top were bulbs in bubble packs hanging from rods and although there were no GU10s on the rods, there were a number of packs lying on the shelf partly hidden by boxes of bulbs.  (You had to be my height or taller to spot these.)  And there were bubble packs of two GU10 bulbs, right wattage.

So I got to the check-out and the woman scanned the pack, and it didn't register.  She put her light on to summon assistance and it took a long time for someone to come and even longer for her to go searching, much to the annoyance of those queuing behind me.  And when she did come back she said there was no record of them selling these, and they had no price for them anywhere on the system.  So they couldn't sell them to me.

Next stop, Robert Dyas.
dormouse1953: (Default)
Behind the checkouts there was a notice stuck up: "If you allow the printer cartridges to get disorganised, you will cause Cthulhu to rise."  This was above a picture of the creature.
dormouse1953: (Default)
Just received a confusing e-mail from Amazon puffing a new release called Verdi: The Complete Works.  Curiously, it says I received it because I bought Stravinsky's complete recordings, not two composers often listed together.

It's confusing, because the e-mail contains the track listings, which is just a list of opening lines, so Disc 1 starts:

1. Overture (Sinfonia) - Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
2. Di Vermiglia, Amabil Luce
3. Son Fra Voi! - Già Parmi Udire Il Fremito
4. Ah! Sgombro È Il Loco Alfin! - Sotto Il Paterno Tetto
5. Oh Patria Terra - Guardami! Sul Mio Ciglio

There is no indication of which opera is on which disc, only one singer listed - Pavarotti - and it gives only ten discs, not enough for a complete Verdi, I would have thought.

Opening the item in Amazon gives slightly more information.  It's actually 75 discs, and a couple of other names are mentioned: Solti and Domingo.  But the track listings are still only for ten discs, no indication of who is singing what opera.  Clearly a case of some sort of automated system trying to do a job it wasn't designed for.
dormouse1953: (Default)
I was buying something in W.H. Smith's on New Year's Day and got a couple of those till vouchers with my receipt.  One was for printer cartridges and the other was for diaries, valid for the first two weeks of the year.

The next day, I was printing something off and I got an ink low warning.  I remembered the voucher.  I also realised I could do with a pocket diary as back up for when my electronic diary was not available.  So I went back yesterday to purchase both items.

When I paid, I got two more vouchers - one for printer cartridges and one for diaries.

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