Dreich day

It's Thursday, so my day began rather earlier than on other days, though as I left the house just after 8am I thought of Blipper Lady Findhorn on her early morning wild swimming jaunts and felt she would scoff at my idea of early ...

The supermarket was wonderfully quiet, and reasonably well-stocked, though the egg shortage was all too apparent. (For the benefit of any overseas reader, avian flu has been wreaking havoc among outdoor birds.) The helpful shelf-stacking man reached down my favourite yogurt for me (part of the redesign has landed us with shelves only for giants) and my usual check-out lady confirmed that there had been panic buying of eggs. I spent over £100 again, all before breakfast.

Later I went out again to a very different shop. We're fortunate in having a health shop a couple of streets away - the one in which I was always able to buy flour even when the supermarket had none because of the panic buying of bread during the pandemic (Why was that? Was there a real shortage? Funny how one - or this one anyway - forgets ...). I had a cheery conversation with the customer in front of me, whom I know, and another with the Romanian chap who came in behind me, whom I'd never seen before, all while I was waiting for my laundry liquid bottle to  be refilled. You can just make our the assistant holding the huge plastic container whose last drops she is emptying into my bottle in the photo; she's standing in front of shelves of interesting herbal teas, while I am beside a bewildering array of exotic chocolate from various worthy sources. I was buying organic bread flours (white, granary) as well as a refill of liquid soap and a vitamin supplement, so by the time I left I had a 3kg bag on my back and a slightly lighter one in my hand. It was by far the cheeriest shop in the damp street.

I stayed in again in the afternoon - it was raining, it was chilly, and I couldn't see that a walk would help anything. Instead I uploaded more Italy photos to Flickr, instructed Himself (yet again) how to do this thing, did my Italian, and finished off with my new physio exercises. Because I think we save on heating when we go for a walk (because we use fires and the central heating is off in the afternoon) we didn't have any heat in the study, so it was a huge relief to go downstairs, light the fire, have hot radiators, and cook dinner.

Can I confess I'm now lost with budgets? I haven't a scooby how today's budget will affect us - please don't try to tell me!