Friday 13 December 2013

A Journey

Christmas looms and our little market town has gone mad today (market day).   All the fruit and vegetable stalls, the fish stalls, the butchers - had great long queues and people were rushing hither and thither as though tomorrow was the big day.   The local band was playing carols in the square.   The supermarket was so busy that there were no trolleys to be had and even if there had been there wasn't room to push them between the people in the aisles.
What is it with folk that they seem to have this need to stock up on so much food?   After all, the shops are really only closed on Christmas Day - most of them open again on Boxing Day morning, at least for part of the day.

I came home from town and the farmer and I, with Tess, went the thirty miles to Sedbergh to meet our God-daughter for lunch and to exchange Christmas presents.  Well, it should have been thirty miles but two thirds of the way there (it was pouring with rain by this time and the cloud was down low on the hills) the road was closed and we had to make a twenty mile detour, which made us late.   Coming back we made the same detour, only to find that when we reached the turn off the road had been opened in our absence!

Still, one more job to tick off my list.

10 comments:

John Going Gently said...

You never stop pat, do u?

Gwil W said...

Today I got up and ate my porridge. We are two bears. The other bear always makes the breakfast before I am awake. After breakfast I checked my emails and did a couple of small household tasks. Then I went for a 2 hour run. The trails were quite muddy and there was a light mist. But I enjoyed it. When I got back I had some spaghetti. Then I composed a poem based on the quotes of Bill Clinton and Donald Rumsfeld and stuck it on my blog. In the evening I had some salami and bread and watched a TV docu about water, mountains, and landslides and had a mug of hot punch. I may go to bed in a few minutes. Yesterday was a busier day as I went to the post off queue which was actually not so boring as I imagined it would be. There was only a small queue. Maybe more people are sending emails and doing their xmas present shopping on internet these days.

Acornmoon said...

It is nice to think that markets are well supported and that the local shops had customers in long queues. In these days of shopping on line, we will miss our local shops when they are gone. Use it or loose it!

MorningAJ said...

I only wish we had that kind of market near us. We don't even have a decent butcher except farm shops.

Terry and Linda said...

Isn't that the way it always goes!

I think it would be lovely to shop where you shop...here we all go to Wal-Mart and shop...nothing really fresh, nothing exciting...
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
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Arija said...

So worry about the double detour Pat. I hate shopping near holidays, people are always in a rush and mostly grumpy and the collective consciousness just weighs me down. Luckily the grandchildren do most of the fest cooking these days, I just bake a few extra special family traditional Christmas goodies although the granddaughters do the bulk of that as well.
Lucky me!!!

angryparsnip said...

awwwwwww I am happy to hear Tess went to the lunch. Did she get a gift too ?

cheers, parsnip

Cro Magnon said...

Christmas is the 'Marketing Men's' most successful event. As you say, the shops are closed for one, or two at the most, days but people shop as if for a month's siege.

And the Christmas Turkey is no more than a large roast Chicken, but what a fuss is made about its preparation.

I am still leaving any 'holiday shopping' till the 20th.

Cloudia said...

What a buddy day! If you were super riche you might have flown by autogyro⭐

The Weaver of Grass said...

Lovely to see that everyone is taking Christmas in their stride. Perhaps it is something to do with our age - whatever it is - thanks for calling and keep calm.