The Supermarket Chore!

One of life's essential tasks if you are the person responsible for running the household is the daily and weekly grocery shop.
Now the fact that it is essential does not make it enjoyable, in fact it is one of the least enjoyable jobs there is, it is up there with cleaning the toilet in a house that boasts three men! Others may disagree and even argue that it is like taking a coffee break away from the hustle and bustle of their daily routine that is the housework.......give me peace!!!
The supermarkets are at war with your hearts, minds and wallet, there is no pleasure for the shopper only con tricks and mind games to get you to part with your hard earned cash!!
You know what I mean, it happens to us all, you go in to the shop knowing you need a loaf of bread and a carton of milk, so you pick up a basket as that will more than do the job in hand, by the time you have got past the first lane, you are pushing the basket along the floor with your foot as it is now to heavy to lift, in your mind at this point is a raging debate about the pros and cons of leaving the basket where it is and getting a trolley, meaning the walk of shame past the now obligatory security guard that is at every supermarket front door in case you make a break for it with a potato!
So walk of shame complete, round one to the supermarket and you start your shopping again knowing you are about to spend slightly more than you were meant to, but hey we have to eat and we must need it or I would not be buying it, would I?.........Round two to the supermarket!!
So as you go around being hit with promotion after promotion that you just cant resist and the smell of freshly baked bread and cakes filters through the store, just to make sure that your hunger senses are now on full alert, ready to pounce on the first item that just looks good enough to eat, no matter what that item maybe the chances are it is going in the now hard to push trolley.
Now looking at your full to the brim , aye overflowing trolley you question your own sanity in trying to use a basket in the first place!! Round three to the supermarket!
So trolley full to the brim it is time to load them on to a conveyor belt that will trundle towards the checkout operator, a person who clearly hates her job and now hates you because you have just piled up your mountain of promotions and bargains that means they will have to serve you listening to their till confirm every item with that infernal beep beep.
An awkward hello, followed by do you need any bags, no right answer here, if you say no and produce your own but half way through the packing run out, then be prepared for a rather huffy response when you stop the checkout person in mid flow as they throw your goods past the scanner, aye twice if it forgets to beep! On the flip side say yes please to bags and you get that look of despair that says you  have failed the environment, but worse still they have to turn around to get you them, with all the inconvenience that brings to their misery.
Bags packed, a mountain of paperwork spewing out of the till and wallet prized open and relieved of your hard earned cash. Aye another round to the supermarket!!
The job is not yet finished, you still have to pass one or two hurdles yet to get out of the store and into the fresh air, you have the newspaper kiosk where many of us seem intent on getting our own back on the supermarket, the idea of something for nothing, the people who stand and read the papers making no attempt to buy them, now these people used to annoy me to the point of distraction, however I now find myself admiring their fight back spirit!! A round to the shopper?
So you escape the clutches of the supermarket, you get home and have put all the shopping away battling with the fridge because it can hold so many buy one get one free packs of cheese and butter, finally the task is complete, job done, task over well at least for today!
As I collapse into my favourite chair with my hot drink of choice, I count the score to the supermarket and it is definitely a points win if not a knockout to them, so I challenge anyone to say that shopping is a pleasure, a coffee break and not the worst job on the list of household chores!

Talk To The Telly

So here you will find me the grumpy granddad, the alter ego of the stay at home granddad that looks after the wee one and the house, this is where I sit in my shed and rant at life, when all are out and I get five minutes to myself that is!! I rant everyday at some point but will save most of them for the shed, however once or twice a week I will be letting one or two rants free from the shed and sharing them here, where I hope you will join me!
Is it just me or is the world we live in not changing for the better, is it regressing into something that our ancestors would be quick to recognise?

Now straight away many of you will argue that we have never had it so good, you will point to technology, supermarkets and the fact we all have two cars- well according to some survey somewhere, a survey that also says we have 2.2 kids!!- however those very things are the items that I would argue are sending us back in time.
Take technology , now there is no doubt that we are better off for inventions such as the fridge and central heating systems, that control the temperature all on its own, so even if we are not at home our beer is cold and our sitting room is cosy! That however is not the technology I am talking about, aye I know, I am cherry picking but surely we would be better off if cherry picking had been applied at an earlier stage, a stage before we have come to expect life to run without us trying.

Take our home viewing experience for example, the new smart tellies talk to us, change channels for us and even know what we like to watch once it has been in the house for a couple of days!! My wife aka the law enforcer in my house, has been with me twenty five years and still does not know what I like to watch or eat for that matter! How do we get past that, aye we talk and discover new things about each other, aye even to this day, in the future though it looks like the husband will tell the telly who in turn will inform the wife what he takes in his coffee! It does not stop there, our phones that used to be used to hold a conversation with our friends, now talk to the telly as well, letting it know what time we will be home at and what we would like as our evenings entertainment!!, again a game the law enforcer aka the wife and I have played for years goes a begging! You know the game, guess where I am, will I be home in time for dinner and what will the mood be like! Aye we have all played it! Yes all lost now we have the smart telly running our houses in fact the only thing the telly does not do yet, is speak to the microwave, and start your ping ding dinner!
So the household telly has moved up the food chain and taken away some of life's tasks that used to take some thought backed up be some conversation!

So has all of this made us better off or is it returning us to a time where our ancestors had no need for conversation, I will let you chat among yourselves about that one or if that art has already been lost, just ask your smart telly!