AnneMarriott

1 hour ago, Mumofballetmaddaughter said:

I usually do scan and shop at Tesco so have to scan my clubcard to access a scanner.

 

What is scan and shop?  Is it some wonderful system of avoiding the checkout?  If so, sign me up immediately!  I've seen it at our local Sainsbury's but never bothered to find out about it.

6 hours ago, alison said:

Anne, we've nicknamed our local, upgraded Tesco's superstore The Hellhole.  I hate it.  It's way too big, and doesn't have any mobile reception within the building, so you can't ring home and ask whether you've run out of something ...

The nickname would suit ours, too.  It's huge - not only Tesco itself but there are Dorothy Perkins, Burtons and Wallis sections in addition to Tesco's own clothes, then there's a hairdressers, halal butcher, a Royal sweets shop, a dry cleaners, a wigs, hairpieces and beauty section, health food concession, dentist, opticians and pharmacy plus petrol station.  You can also send money abroad.  There's a cafe/restaurant AND a coffee shop.  And click and collect department where you can pick up things you have ordered online or order on the spot from a catalogue, like Argos.  Not to mention the tobacco counter and lottery tickets.  Various other services come and go: accommodation letting agency, watch repair counter, travel agency. Really there's very little you can't do there if you can stand the agony.  No wonder the high street is dying.   Unfortunately there seems to be mobile reception because another of the hazards for mobile non-users is having to avoid people with phones glued to their ears having long conversations about anything other than what to buy.

And just try paying by cash!  It always seems to need the one harassed staff member on hand to help to come and enter a code into the keypad.  How this is supposed to make things more efficient is a mystery to me.

Once again the weekly purgatory at Tesco has made me want to spit.  The coin mechanisms have been removed from the trolleys, presumably in readiness for the new £1 coins.  So now the car park is littered with hundreds of abandoned trolleys, all blocking parking spaces or requiring hazardous manoeuvres to drive along the roads.  One has to get out of the car to clear a space to park!  I was just ruminating on the poor standards of trolley-users when I spotted the trolley marshal, looking thoroughly defeated as well he might, ambling about collecting errant trolleys in a rather unenthusiastic manner.  Some litter lout had seen fit to scatter a large quantity of wrapping materials along the roads between the parking spaces.  Far from picking it up, as I had expected, the marshal kicked it into touch, thus blocking even more parking spaces.

Having managed to do get everything on my list, despite having to hunt for items that had mysteriously moved since last week and perform slaIoms to avoid the staff with large multi-crate wagons doing shopping for online customers and little gangs of managerial staff holding meetinbgs in the middle of the aisles, I started unloading at the checkout only to fall victim to one of those premature unloaders in the queue behind me.  I have moaned about this before.  I cannot understand why it is necessary to start putting shopping on the conveyor belt when the person ahead of you has lots more shopping to unload.  Repeated requests to stop or allow more space went unheeded.  Physically pushing the offending shopping back also went unheeded.  Pleas from the cashier to go to the basket only checkout - yes, readers, the culprit only had a basket!  - also ignored.  I would go at a time when no-one else wants to do their shopping but then there are no checkouts open (and I won't bore everyone with my opinions of self-serve checkouts), the shelves are empty and the whole place is a fire hazard with packaging lying about.  

I try to relieve the agony by ordering non-perishables for delivery once a month.  It seems to work most of the time.  But I don't want someone else choosing my tomatoes or cheese so the weekly shop is unavoidable.  I hate it!

1 hour ago, Jan McNulty said:

Last night I went to see Available Light in Manchester.  I think the Palace is not a good venue and I chose to sit in a side aisle on Row P of the stalls.

 

The 4 seats in front of me were empty.  Two ladies moved along from further out and completely obliterated my view.  One of the ladies was a lot larger than me (hair, height and breadth).  I told her I couldn't see a thing and she suggested I should move.  I'm afraid I responded and told her that I was actually sitting in the seat I had booked unlike her...  It could have turned nasty methinks but her friend suggested that they just moved one seat further back down.  I should say that I have never experienced this problem in those seats before.

 

Should I have said anything?  When I have occasionally moved seats I have always made sure I wasn't obstructing someone else's view.

Yes, but Janet you are a nice considerate person - the sort who always checks behind her when going through a door to see if anyone else is close behind so you can hold the door.  Sadly a diminishing minority these days.

1 hour ago, Ian Macmillan said:

I will not readily swap Mmes Lear and Keith-Lucas for serious chaps in specs, sorry.

Well I don't know who they are but couldn't they be given specs, a desk to sit behind and a formal script without spoiling your enjoyment?

Why can't we go back to the old days when a serious-looking man in horn-rimmed spectacles read a region-by-region forecast of the day's weather?  I dislike the "budgie with ADHD" delivery, the waving arms, the dotting about between Scotland and the South West while a map in the background tries to keep up.  I don't want to have to look out for spits and spots of rain.  I'm not interested in sunny spells on offer ("oh, not for me, thank you - I had one earlier") and I certainly don't want to hear that showers are flirting with the Far North.

2 hours ago, Melody said:

I have a number of friends on Facebook who I added for games so I don't know them personally - so there's a large range of political and religious beliefs there.

 

Yesterday I unfriended three of them who were gloating about this attack and saying straight out that they hoped it was the first of many because the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. This is so utterly sickening. It makes me wonder what we've come to.

Depressing stuff.  It just goes to show that bigotry and irrational hatred are more than one-sided.  At one time people with such views would only be able to share them with like-minded friends.  Now it seems anyone can boast of attitudes on social media that would have them hauled up before the beak if they said the same thing in public.  

11 hours ago, alison said:

A shame you couldn't photograph her numberplate, Anne: you could have reported her for littering.

Good point, Alison, but even if I had a camera handy (don't own anything resembling a smart phone) I was too taken aback even to notice the numberplate.

39 minutes ago, Melody said:

I was going to ask if there are enough bins for depositing litter (and dog waste) on the footpaths, but of course if the major culprits are drivers who can't be bothered to take their litter home and dispose of it properly, all the bins in the world won't help.

There are no litter bins on the playing fields or along the paths, but it beats me why, when people go to the trouble of taking tons of food with them on an outing they can't manage to take the packaging home with them.  There is a MacDonald's a stone's throw from here and from casual observation it is their customers who are the main culprits.  Eton College (presumably in despair at having their pitches fouled) have installed dog waste bins at strategic points but of course they get filled with other things such as empty drinks bottles and cans deposited by tidy-minded people who can't read the signs: "dog waste only".  So dog walkers have to leave their little offerings beside the bins.  There are litter bins in the parks but even those sitting on a bench right next to a litter bin are unable to reach out to put their litter in the bin - far easier to drop it on the ground.  But I can just about see that this sort of thing is just thoughtlessness whereas chucking litter out of a car in a residential road seems more like a deliberate insult.

8 hours ago, John Mallinson said:

Brings back memories of Mrs Thatcher picking up litter - not, let me hasten to add, that you remind me of Mrs T, but I'm sure she would have had words for the white Mercedes!

 

I'm glad I don't remind you of her!  And I picked up the litter with my own fair hands, unwitnessed by reporters or cameramen.  Blue is the colour of the Conservatives but  I doubt if her words for the white Mercedes would have been quite as blue as mine ...

I'm sure this has been covered before but I'm being driven mad by the amount of litter deposited in our neighbourhood.  We live on the edge of Eton College playing fields and are surrounded by open countryside and parkland, riverside footpaths and cycle paths and public footpaths to Eton and Windsor, Dorney, Wraysbury and Heathrow Airport (although I've never tried the latter myself). Our out-of-the-way little cul-de-sac has access to all of the above. It's a paradise for dog walkers, joggers, hikers, cyclists, rowers, kayakers and picnic-ers.  Unfortunately many of them drop litter and sometimes what should be pretty countryside looks more like an annexe to the municipal waste disposal unit.

Yesterday I witnessed the driver of an immaculate white Mercedes, of the luxury limousine type, throwing the packaging from her lunch/picnic/whatever from the car as she speeded down the road.  A brown paper carrier bag, a polystyrene box, a chip carton, some empty sachets and several ketchup-stained paper napkins flew about in the slipstream.  No actual food, thank goodness.  Needless to say I went and picked it all up.  I won't record the comments muttered under my breath at the time.  

There is one man who throws small bouquets from the front row of the stalls on to the stage.  He never misses.  I'm not sure if it's approved by ROH though.

What a relief!  So pleased for you and her.

I am so sorry to hear about Blackie and even more sorry that you seem to have been the victim of a spiteful prankster.  It never ceases to amaze me how some people get pleasure from causing others pain.  One of my cats disappeared many years ago and we never found him.  He was young and healthy and we lost sleep and worried ourselves sick for ages.  "Only a cat" to the rest of the world but a much-loved friend to you.  I do sympathise.

For sale:  Weds May 24 SCS D54 £6

                Sat May 27 12.30 pm SCS D1 and D54 £6.00 each

Any takers?  Please PM me.

40 minutes ago, Jane S said:

There was a later Bolle/Cope/Watson cast in Remanso I think. And Cervera/Stepanek/Whitehead who were much better, for my taste.

AAAAAAGH!  Now I think I remember this - but I was such an ardent fan of Jonny Cope and Inaki Urlezaga (although I was in a minority there, I think) that my memory for other casts is clouded.

23 minutes ago, Jillykins said:

..."Watson and the effect it had on me as the audience.

Can  anybody tell me, or did I imagine it, if he did Remanso with Cope and possibly Maloney before he became well known?" 

 

I don't remember Watson in Remanso but I'm pretty sure I remember Cope, Acosta and Inaki Urlezaga having a whale of a time in this piece.

10 hours ago, Melody said:

Thanks for the explanation - so basically a more complicated and stressful way of getting to the same place as before. Sigh.

 

Just one thing, though - if the government didn't get the two-thirds majority to hold the early election but did win the subsequent vote of no confidence, why would the election have to go ahead? I mean, if there wasn't the two-thirds majority, wouldn't that just mean the government would have to continue in office until the end of the term or until they could get a two-thirds majority for an early election?

 

Because, honestly, if it's the case that an election has to be held regardless, then the whole thing is just a charade.

The answer to this makes my head ache.  Please Google it and weep.  

21 hours ago, Melody said:

 

 

But I thought these days we had fixed terms like they do over here. If you can just call an early election at a time advantageous to your party, how is that different from before?

This was briefly touched on by Ian MacMillan and bangorballetboy above (sorry, can't seem to find handy numbers of posts to quote).  The Prime Minister can no longer simply call an election before the five year fixed term is up.  The proposal to hold an early election has to receive a two-thirds majority vote in favour. However if the required majority fails to materialise there would be a vote of no confidence in the Government.  Whether that vote is lost or won there would still be a general election - either because the Prime Minister would get his or her way or because the Government would no longer be able to continue in office.

Fascinating, isn't it? 

 

 

 

Also in this age where women are quite rightly playing the major male Shakespearean roles - Viva Dame Harriet Walter, Dame Helen Mirren, Glenda Jackson, Michelle Terry, etc., - I'd love to see a woman's take on Rudolf.  (More shock/horror I suppose amongst some here.)  

 

 

 

Not shock/horror, Bruce, but some bemusement.  How on earth could a woman - any woman - cope with all those athletic pas de deux?

those people who DON'T (won't?)  put the divider at the end of their pile on the conveyor belt, so you have to reach past them to do it yourself! Grr!

.

My bugbear is the person behind me at the checkout who plonks a divider down on the conveyor belt while I am still unloading my trolley, without any idea of how much shopping I still have to unload.  And who then proceeds to unload his or her shopping.  I usually say, "Excuse me but I still have a lot to unload and you haven't left me enough room".  If that doesn't do the trick I just start pushing the divider back and continue unloading.  This is a fairly recent phenomenon - I wonder how it started?  

I really hate supermarket shopping, but then I still remember the old days when food shopping for a week took ages as we queued up at two or three different counters for (e.g) dairy products, prepared meats and so on and then traipsed to another shop for fruit and vegetables, and another for bread, another for dry goods and tinned goods, carrying ever-heavier bags...

I shall never be able to look at that scene in the same way now, Anne!

Oh dear - I hope I haven't ruined it for you!

I can't stand the dance of the cygnets either!

I think we're in a tiny minority...

The Dance of the Cygnets in Swan Lake - completely kills the mood and I find myself longing to borrow the crossbow.

Agree about Marguerite and Armand being overblown - and Marguerite's flying-ringlet wig doesn't help, either.

Ondine.  All of it, but especially the hand-jive living fountain section.