We have been shopping.
This was a completely rubbish idea because really we ought not to be allowed to go shopping together, because Mark just never says no to anything. When I am by myself I am careful about buying too much just in case Mark thinks it is a bad idea. When he is with me it is apparent that he does not, and hence we finish up with a very full trolley.
This happened today, at the end we had to balance the bananas on the top of a teetering pile of excess in our trolley, and we had only just gone in for coffee and blackcurrant juice.
It is nice going shopping with Mark, who understands that I am easily distracted in the supermarket. I get cross with the man who speaks over the tannoy, because of his glottal stops and self satisfied tone: and then I can’t concentrate because of the music, because I think that the supermarket is trying hard to make you walk at the pace of the music they have specially chosen, and then I forget about sugar and teabags because of trying to walk not in time with the music, which sometimes means saying ‘la la la’ in my head, which is not good for helping me work out which dog food is cheapest.
I try very hard indeed to be an organised shopper, because I get very easily muddled in the supermarket, so usually I take a list with me and then add up the prices on a bit of paper as I go round. Today I didn’t do either, and so we went round randomly chucking things that we liked into the trolley and then the total was a complete, and not very nice, surprise at the end.
I consoled myself with the thought that we have got lots of things that will last ages. We have refilled the tuck drawer, and since the children only come home for a few days between now and Christmas it will stay full. We have bought coffee, and that will last ages as well because we haven’t got any daughters at home helping us to drink it. We bought soap powder and loo roll and candles and bin liners, which can hardly really be considered an outburst of wanton excess. It was all stuff that we use, there just seems to be an awful lot of it.
We also went to the paper making shop to buy some things to make some Christmas cards. I don’t usually send Christmas cards, but this year I thought I might have a go at making some. Mark laughed about it until he cried, because he said that my whole desk would be covered with glitter for ever and my fingers would be stuck together and the cards stuck to the desk. This is funny but also unfortunately true, because I have done these things before, once I glued a toy tractor to my hand with SuperGlue and had to prise it off with hot water and a teaspoon. I am not very good at anything that needs dexterity.
Despite laughing Mark came with me to the paper shop which was lovely, they had all sorts of beautiful things and pictures of handmade cards all over the walls put there to make you think that you could make things like that, which worked, because I instantly imagined myself hand-making beautiful shiny, silky cards which people would treasure for ever. Of course I forgot that probably I would just get ink all over my fingers and it would come off in all the wrong places, and people would have to be polite about them and then laugh when I had gone, a bit like the angels the children make out of loo rolls and tinsel which you have got to admire when they are in the Reception class. I have still got those and put them on the Christmas tree every year, Lucy says she would prefer it if I threw them away because of teenage embarrassment issues, but I think they are sweet.
So we bought some card and some glitter, and next week I am going to make a prototype Christmas card, which is really exciting.
Of course they might never get to the production stage, because of being otherwise very busy and also because of incompetence, but it will be really nice to try, and after all, they might turn out all right.
I love this time of year.
