Shopping irritations, and the weather

 1st August - blimey!

Husband came in with me when I was doing the mini top up shop yesterday - quite often he stays in the car, but I suspect because I'd gone to Aldi, he was drawn in by the lure of the middle aisles.  As I said yesterday, I'd written a list and was determined to stick to it - I told husband that.  Might as well have been talking to a brick wall - he kept picking up things that I didn't want or need and adding them to the trolley - such as a jar of coffee, which wasn't on my list - I told him but he said Aldi's one was cheaper than the Sainsbury's one I usually get.  Well yes it is - but he doesn't like the Aldi one and complained about it the last time I bought it!  Which of course he'd forgotten and denied all knowledge of.  I was almost tempted to buy it anyway, to see his reaction when he drank it!  😂  He also put eggs and dog food in the trolley, neither of which I needed and so had to tell him to put them back.  I much prefer it when he stays in the car and I can shop in peace and without his 'help'.

On the subject of shopping, I always use one of the smaller trolleys, unless I'm doing a rare big stock up shop.  For the past few weeks though, I've noticed a distinct lack of small trolleys, sometimes (especially at Sainsburys) there are none outside at all, and it's not as if the shop is ever really busy with loads of singletons, couples or small families using the small trolleys.  The cynic in me says it's a money-making ploy by the retailers - reasoning that if the customer is forced to use a bigger trolley, they'll automatically buy more!  Well I don't.  It just irritates me using a bigger trolley as I find it harder, with my bad back, to bend over and reach down to get stuff out of the bottom of the big deep trolleys.

Fingers crossed, the weather looks better today so looks like we will be able to get to the van this morning. Just for the day though, we're not staying overnight as there's yet another band of heavy rain due overnight and tomorrow morning.  And now the forecasters are saying we might have rain and cooler temperatures throughout August too - what happened to our summer?  Although I have to say I'm so glad we haven't got or had the scorching temperatures some countries have been experiencing, I think Betty and I would have had heatstroke, neither of us copes well with hot weather.  20-25 C (68-77 F) is just fine for me - although just lately our temperatures have been lower than that, around 18 or 19, below normal for this time of year.

Brenda (welcome back, where have you been?  I missed you) - you're right, we haven't been to the van as often so far this year.  It's a combination of reasons - we've had rather a lot of medical appointments - well, mainly husband - which are all nearer to home than the van.  The weather hasn't been very good, we've not had periods of consistently good sunny dry weather like we had last year, apart from some in June, which has meant far fewer of our fellow van owners have been coming down to their vans either, so the park is very quiet indeed - too quiet for husband's liking, he gets bored with no-one to talk to.  And when it's raining often, we don't go out much, which means husband just has the TV on in the van all the time and promptly falls asleep in front of it.  I like to sit out in the van garden and read a book, which obviously I can't do in the rain.  I just hope the weather improves very soon and we have a warm and dry late summer.  It would be a pity if we couldn't make such good use of the van this year.  It does look as though the weather MIGHT be a bit better next week, so hopefully we may be able to go there and actually stay for a while.  We'll see.