No contest

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Yesterday I had an email from Tesco's asking me to complete a survey as to why I had not shopped online with them for over 3 months. I've never shopped frequently, prolifically or exclusively with them - but did find it handy at Christmas (mainly for bulky and heavy essentials - ie drink).

I ticked the relevant boxes in the survey - mainly the ones a the bottom of each page called "other" and tried to explain in the small space allowed my reasons for not using them.

This morning my reasoning was perfectly illustrated. The fridge was exceedingly bare (partly as I've just done a 5 day shift at work) so I needed to fill it with something. For real food shopping, rather than drive 2 miles into Kendal to Asda (parking miles from the door, overwhelmed by crowded aisles and too much choice of food I don't want anyway), I go to a smaller northern supermarket at Kirkby Lonsdale. It might be 8 miles away, but it's 8 miles of quiet road (no traffic, just pheasants) with views to miles of glorious countryside. My kind of driving. I had no idea what I was going to buy (apart from staples like bananas for Henry's early morning snack). But the first thing I saw when I went in the door was English asparagus. The rest followed on from there - Jersey Royals, local tomatoes. local rhubarb, Scottish salmon, an enormous joint of local ham, Waberthaite bacon and pancetta, Lancashire cheese. The cheese was cut to the size I wanted (while I discussed the many different Lancashire cheeses with the assistant). I could buy the exact amount of mince etc and know it hadn't travelled far. And the "boy" on the till was even older than me!

I didn't mean this to sound like an endorsement of a particular store - it's just to say there are alternatives out there to the faceless multinationals.

Now all I have to do, is unpack my bags and decide what to cook first.
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