Optional paralysis
Louise is away at the moment, visiting her aunt, uncle and cousin down in Devon. This makes me solely responsible for the children for a whole two days, which is a rare experience. So far so good, though.
This morning I took the children to do the weekly grocery shopping. We left fairly early to beat the rush, which wasn’t hard seeing that they’d been awake since 6.30 with me following (inevitably) shortly after.
We rocked out to some Kings Of Leon on the way. Later, Ben asked if he could buy the same “music stick” as me when he grew up. I asked him why and he said it was so that it could have cool music like mine on it. Go the Kings!
We drove through the now-characteristic British summer weather — grey skies and light rain — and easily found a spot in the car park. This was when I realised that I’d forgotten the carefully prepared shopping list. Oh well, I thought, I’ll wing it and probably won’t forget too much.
My… god! I hate shopping. Louise normally coordinates our shopping activities. If I’m in attendance, it’s more as mobile child minder and high shelf reacher than as an active shopper.
This time I had to make all the choices myself. Now, if I didn’t care about Issues then this would have been easy. But Fair Trade and Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley Bloody Eats-It-All have done too good a job at educating me to the plight of farmers and chickens and the environment in general, so now I have to think about everything I purchase.
Is that chicken from the UK? Is it farm assured? Where have those apples come from? What?! I can’t get apples from the UK? Oh, maybe that’s right: seasonal. So how far have these ones come from? Brazil?! New Zealand?! So, which of those is further? Can you get Fair Trade apples? Argh!
And don’t even get me started on China. Here’s a little challenge: Go into any homeware section of a supermarket and find something made somewhere other than China.
Now that last paragraph might sound a little xenophobic and I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a component of the sentiment — I don’t like the thought of our country being beholden to another entirely alien culture on the other side of the planet. But… is it really right that a large proportion of the goods purchased in this country are shipped from halfway around the world from a country that has such differing standards to us when it comes to environmental concerns and civil liberties? People often ask “how can they make these so cheap?”– there is an explanation but I don’t expect they want to hear it.
So, I’ve managed to spiral this post from something cheery and life-affirming into a bitter rant on the injustices of the world. Perhaps I shouldn’t write at this time of night but it is kind of how I feel right now… I learnt about stagflation today. Yeah, the future’s looking bloody marvelou right now.