ohsocynical wrote:seeingclearly wrote:Swarthlander wrote: I don't like the on-line Mirror, most of it is sleb-crap or depressing sensationalism - like the Sun but with a different political slant.
Grinding oats?
Why would you do that?. I buy a big bag of rolled oats, (porridge, bread, biscuits, etc.), cheap enough and it lasts a long time.
Hunting out bargains in different shops depends how far apart the shops are, it can be counter productive.
And I don't like her recipes anyway.
Moan...mumble... moan... tut... grumble... moan...
She lost me on the sorting of the frozen veg. A couple of fresh carrots, a small cabbage finely shredded and a couple of loose onions perhaps? Or kale, loose mushrooms, no freezer needed. Asian grocers offer much better variety of loose veg, various beans, little aubergines, sweet potatoes, as well as the usual and don't mind if you buy very small quantities, if you're lucky enough to have one, and do small bags of spices for about 35-50p. I'd have found much more for the money, and over time things like oil and basic spices become affordable. Actually even my cheap greengrocers carries stuff that works out very cheap.
We don't have any stores like that in Bracknell. I just thank goodness we've an Aldi right across the road. I think there's one Asian store and that's mainly an off licence. Neighbourhood stores are either Co-ops or Newsagents that do a bit of food for convenience...The're dead expensive though. You'd starve if you had to buy from them. No butchers at all. And I think the greengrocers went recently. They were in our small town centre, but that's being rebuilt so the few small businesses that were there have given up and stopped trading.
When the new buildings go up, it'll be Tapas bars, restaurants and a multiplex cinema, [although we already have one of those] also a small M&S, and for the plebs a Primart.
I was in WHSmith the other day, [It's a big store] and there were three customers. I had to call out for someone to come to the till.
In Boots, looking for tea tree oil products, [which they didn't have] I waited for nearly five minutes for someone to come to the til, despite one of the assistants going to rake the cashier out of the back room.
I lost patience, left the solitary item I was going to buy on the counter and walked out.
Yes, Aldi and Lidl are surprisingly good on some things. My Asian shop is right opposite Sainsburys, but then there are plenty like it here anyway. I've been to places with even less than you have, a kind of extended newsagents, a chip shop and that's it. But lots of people who do have thnic type shops, Asian, Chinese or even Polish won't use them. Sounds like your new development is finished it will cater to those with more affluent lives and people on low incomes will be disregarded. I've long championed the idea of Veg vans to places with little provision, we do in fact have local delivery services now that do low cost fruit and veg, not the high premium organic stuff. They do good produce too.
The thing about any kind of service these days is it seems almost non existent. It's such a contrast to my other 'home' where I found a wonderfully cascading down society, where it's the norm for people to be helpful, take the time to find out each other's needs, and where you can get anything at all done easily, for very little. My travel bag, not even full, split as I was leaving to go there, we taped it up with gaffer tape, and I thought I'd have to buy another. My SIL bore it off when I arrived, and returned with it the next day, invisibly repaired! But that's just a trivial example, the taxi and tuktuk drivers wait for you and don't charge extra, people come to clear your drains and gutters, sell you fresh fish and seafood, deliver newly baked bread, well they'll do almost anything. They aren't subservient, and they aren't sulky, and somehow everything functions well. And even very poor people have excellent teeth!
My son was surprised because on the face of it the buildings and infrastructure seem a bit ramshackle, but on closer inspection things were clean and orderly, little gets wasted, and nearly everyone works to some degree or other. People who were servants, in former times, now have similar care and service roles, but are fed exactly the same meals as their employers, in addition to their pay, it would be considered rude to do otherwise. And everyone except the incapable will do their own plates and dishes, so no one gets left with the grotty stuff. Of course if you want pizza it costs! But people could and did cook fresh food twice a day, it was affordable, by workers, and proportionately much cheaper than food is here.
It was hard coming back, tbh, to our stifling society where people are unable to move without the state breathing down their neck. The Tories say they are small state, but they aren't, they spend such a lot, return so little, and are very authoritarian. And we used to have grocers, fish mongers, butchers, green grocers, I guess we're reaping the whirlwind of fifty years of easy way out and not seeing where it would lead.
