Christmas Shopping

From a draft first written last Christmas:
I may have touched on this subject in a previous entry, so bear with me if you've heard it before, but Shopping drives me mad.

Granted, men generally don't do shopping, we don't enjoy it, we are not programmed for it. But just occasionally and to keep her indoors happy we have to show willing and go and get cheese and nibbles and a chicken or something, rather than the car mags beer and gadgets we really want to buy. This means going into unfamiliar parts of the supermarket, by which I mean all of it. The entire supermarket is unfamiliar, because seemingly once a week the displays are re-arranged to confuse and confound the unwary. There is no reason or logic in the layout. I tried to find bread sauce, you would think that would be under the heading of "Home Baking" NO NO NO. It is under sauces. Brandy sauce, however is not under Sauces at all, but with the custard and rice pudding. Or possibly with the Christmas Pudding. Why do we need to buy bread sauce anyway? Given that no one eats it? It is one of those traditional things put on the Christmas dinner plate to be left over at the end of the meal. And why buy a packet mix of the damn stuff, when it is basically a white sauce with some bread crumbs in it? Even I can make a simple white sauce and put some stale bread crumbs in it. Anyway I digress from the main point.

Our roads are proliferated with signs and speed bumps, chicanes and parking regulations to keep us where we should be, speed us up, slow us down, prevent us from stopping or divert us from where we want to be. Our supermarkets, by comparison, are entirely lawless.

Yet no-where but supermarkets are such regulations more urgently needed. There are customers, women mostly, well alright, women exclusively, who want to make shopping a social event. Not for them the idea of going in, selecting a purchase, paying for it and going home. No. They want to meet friends and have prolonged conversations about nothing in particular whilst they are there. Not a problem, you might think, most supermarkets now have a cafe or restaurant attached. These of course, miss the point completely. These women don't want to shop and then chat, they want to chat whilst they shop, or more accurately they want to chat in between shopping. That is why they can be seen blocking the aisle with their trolleys having a lengthy discussion about nothing in general whilst you struggle to get through with a trolley with a wonky wheel to reach the milk. They are totally oblivious to the havoc they cause. They stand belligerently in the way, as you try in vain to squeeze apologetically past them to reach the tinned raspberries, and look at you as if you are some reckless impatience git, just because you want to finish this hateful shopping mission today.

They should be paying congestion charges, they are there so long. No where in Britain are traffic police needed more than in the supermarket. There are more cases of careless driving, illegal parking and abandoned vehicles (trolleys) anywhere than inside a supermarket.

For supermarkets to be more attractive to men we now need, no, we demand the following;

1. A sensible layout, where the beer milk, potatoes and heavy items are at the front of the shop and not the back, so that they are in the bottom of the trolley and not squashing the fruit and veg you have to pick first on the way in as per the current layout.

2. Strictly enforced No Waiting policy in the aisles.

3. Abandoned trolleys to be removed immediately and impounded.

4. No socialising allowed within the shop floor area, this to be permitted only inside the Cafe.

5. Minimum speed limit of 5 mph, anyone loitering to be forcibly moved on by security.

6. Items to be displayed clearly and logically. Any seasonal display at Christmas should therefore include the aforementioned bread sauce, Christmas Pudding, Crackers (both novelty and cheese) Stuffing, beer, wine, whiskey, sherry etc etc. Likewise, during the Summer (the first Sunday in July I beleive) there should be raw meat, sausages, barbecues, garden chairs, lawnmowers, beer and a bottle of Pimms for the ladies, all available within one easy to reach display section.

7. A topless Page 3 girl operatimnga special till for men only. Some may say this is taking things to far, but we already have special tills for the disabled, the deaf, mothers, elderly folk, etc etc. So why not have one specially for men. What man doesn;t look for the most attractive girl on the till anyway, regardless of how long the queue may be, so he can indulge in a little innocent flirting? None of us pick out the minger with the facial hair and the squint.

8. SatNav on the trolleys. Men love gadgets, and it would save an awful lot of time if you could type "tinned peaches" into the trolley handset and it directed you straight to them. Because you can be damned sure they won't be in the same place they were in last week.

9. Express haggling checkouts. Men love to get a bargain - or at least the feeling that they have got a bargain. The current express checkouts where you serve yourself are good, but you have to remove everythign from the trolley, scan it and put it all back. Far better would be the automated haggling checkout, where you make a "best offer" like on Ebay, then the robot either accepts your offer or haggles until a fair price is reached. The trolley could have a scannr built in, so the store would have a rough idea of the value of goods you've thrown in there. This would speed up th process at the checkout no end.

10. A bar in the car park, wih valet loading - you go for a beer, whilst a uniformed manservant loads your purchases into the car for you, returning your keys once he's completed the task.

And if all that is too far fetched, then let us have online shopping that is interesting. We need to see visually and in true to life scale what we are buying, and how full it makes the trolley look, so gve us a 3D lifelike image of the store with a trolley we can guide around it, throwing virtual goods into it. The store would be empty of course except for Page 3 girls on the virtual chekout. And if anyvirtual granny or wailing toddler got in the way we could blast them with the trolley mounted laser cannon. Now that's what I call shopping!

Grand Day Out 3

For our December Walk we had settled on a two day challenge, intending taking on two of the three Yorkshire Peaks, Ingleboruogh and Pen-y-ghent, leaving Whernside for another day. Some of our usual suspects couldn't make it, and when Rachel dropped out due to work commitments, so did Dawn, lewaving just the stalwarts to go on, Dave Selby and PK along with myself. The plan of attack was an 0445 start, pick up at Driffield then to Horton In Ribbersdale where we would be staying the night after tackling one of the peaks, then doing the next on the Wednesday before returning home in plenty of time for work on Thursday. (Although I was hoping to be contacted by duties with an extra day off!)

As ever plans went to ratshit the moment we left Driffield, with a snowfall hampering our progress through to Horton. Oh yes, and to make things worse we arrived in Horton, thanks to SatNav woman, who managed to steer us off the wrong junctions whenever we hit the A1 or M1, rather than the similarly named and fortunatley not to faraway Horton in Ribbersdale. Snow had settled, but ceased falling by the time we set off up Ingleborough at about 1120 hours.

Having gone only a short distance it started to snow again, but as it was on and off, and not a serious blizzard we decided to push on - there was perhaps 2 to 3 inches of snow by now, and it was probably hovering about -6 degrees, but hey, what the hell. We'd come a long way, we were dressed for the weather and determined to get some walking in right? Light weights we are not (particularly the fat lad!) Visibilty began to deteriorate sporadically, but it's a well waymarked track and confident in Daves map reading and falling over abilties we pressed onwards. A breif luncheon sojourn in a derelict shooting lodge provided welcome relief from the wind and snow, and the opportnity to enjoy a glass of red wine with my Duck and port wine pate sandwiches - well, one has to keep standards doesn't one? In the absence of any girls we enjoyed a Yorkie too.

We pushed on and by 1400 hours had reached a decision point. Visibilty was almost nil, further snowfall had left about 6 inches of snow now settled on the ground with progres becoming more difficult. Dave had fallen over/slipped about 5 times by now (his total was 8 by the time we got back) and although he is well padded and escaped serious injury there was a real risk on of us might break something. incredibly, despite the sub zero temperatures, I had a sweat on from the exersions of making progress against what had now turned into a blizzard, with stinging freezing rain and hail being propelled at us sideways.

We reckoned we were only maybe 20 minutes from the summit, but the last 20 minutes is a hard climb, requiring the use of hands in places, and in the conditions it would have been too risky to push on. Even by 2 p.m. with the falling snow and cloud cover the light was starting to fail, and if we had taken the risky decision to push on it would have meant making the latter part of the return journey in the dark. We made the wise decision to turn back and head for the pub, with a vow to return in better weather, with more daylight hours to play with. incredibly, and to our joint surprise, given the remotness of our location, it was at precisely thsi moment that my mobile phone rang and duties granted me Thursday as a rest day. Proof indeed that they can reach you anytime, anyplace, amywhere! Strangely, immediately I terminated the call I lost the signal, and only gained a strong signal once we returned to the pub. Bob works in mysterious ways.
Left: The snow got deeper than this in places, over black ice on the rocky bits - very slippery!

At the pub (I forget the name of it - was it the Globe?) we had booked bunks in the bunk room, which turned out to be colder than a badgers nose, and turning on the radiators did little to improve things. Still, things would improve after a nice hot shower and a meal, right?

The hot shower proved a little too much to ask. There where two showers, one had a broken control for the heat adjustment, and none of us had pliers, so it would only give cold showers. The other one worked fine for the Selby person, but then refused to give hot water for anyone else - not in any quantity anyway. It would either give a jetwash of cold water, or a trickle of superheated steam too hot to bear - but nothing in between.

The bar opened at 6 with the promise of a mixed grille. Unfortunately chef didn;t have the ingredients for a mixed grill, despite the hills being covered in "them big woolly dogs" (sheep) and cows he was short of eggs, lamb chops and something else. We settled on fillet steak but guess what - he didn't have that either, but he did have sirloin which was very tasty when it arrived. PK plumped for Fish and Chips which looked equally appertising. Sadly the Black Wooly Dog bitter had run out, as had my second choice. I had the distinct impression this place was running down for the winter. I ended up with Timothy Taylor biter which was palatable right up until i drank the barrel dry and had to switch to John Smiths - did I really get through 8 pints that night? PK and Dave meanwhile were drinking Guiness, which didn't bode well for the ambience in the bunkhouse later.

At least a tenner disappeared into the pool table and a very sociable evening was had by all, retiring to the bar until about midnight, when we ran out of money and our drinking trousers wore out, much to the reilief of the barmaid, who we had christened Ingrid, for no other reason than she had revealed herself to be a Student visiting from Austria. We never asked her real name.

The bunkhouse was Bloody freezing, and dispite the beer coat and thermal vest it was an uncomfortable night for me, although to be fair my sleeping bag is summer weight - PK had some sort of centrally heated NATO surplus sleeping bag with a built in DVD player, minibar, colour satelitte TV, with hot and cold running water and reports that he was quite comfortable. Mind you, he fell out of his third storey bunk at one point so he could have been suffering concussion whe he said this. The night was punctuated by the homely smell of Guiness farts and PK's tuneful snoring.

Breakfast couldn't come to soon. Incredibly noone had a hangover, and the concensus of opinion is that the beer must be watered down. Despite having ordered full English breakfast, surprise surprise there were no eggs. I don;t see why the Chef couldn't have nipped out overnight and got soem from the loal Tesco's, it was only about 50 miles away, and the snow hadn't got that much worse, only another couple of inches falling overnight.

More snow was forecast however, so despite the clear blue skies and the inviting slope of Pen-y-Ghent it was probably a wise decision to cut and run and head for home. Pk was suffering a knee injury he insists is from the walking rather than the drunken buffoonery of falling out of bed, and I was feeling the effects of too little sleep. Rather than risk getting cut off in the snow and unable to return home (which would have been a terrble shame - snowed in in a pub!) we set off reluctantly for home. No point being stuck in a pub with no beer, no eggs and surrounded by Woolly dogs you can't eat.

Pen-Y-Ghent (or that dark brooding bastard, as Dave would have it) looking terribly inviting under a cloudless blue sky.

We shall return and conquer.

The car doors were welded shut by the snow and ice, and it took considerable effort to defrost and release it. Temperature at that time (about 1015) had risen to -4, so the overmight low was probably -10 or less, and we reckon about -7 (plus the wind chill factor) when we tackled the climb up Ingleborough. Okay, it doesn't make us Chris Bonnington, but it certainly gives a feeling a achievement to have got as far as we did given the conditions.