General Chat

I won't identify them but there are a couple of villages near us, one with a huge caravan park where the city chavs come to fight away their summers and play Bingo.Then they aspire to move there. You can only get sausages and a few gammon steaks in the butchers I am told.

The other is where the yachties live.

In one village the supermarket shelves are bare and there has been fighting in the aisles.

We went to the other yesterday and OH popped into a well stocked butchers and the greengrocers had everything you could ever need. You can only buy two loaves of bread in the Co-op but that is sensible I think.

A bit of class at play there I feel.

Being in NW London, we have plenty of shops and supermarkets not too far away.

Thursday: Got in the car at 06:50 to drive to a big Sainsbury which had a 70+ hour from 07:00 (opening) to 08:00. Finally crawled to the carpark entrance by 07:15. It was solid. Deciding that there was no point in waiting we carried on to an Asda - about 5 minutes away. Car park was about 80% full. But the store itself was heaving. It took a while to get some of the things on our shortish list. Our drive home took us past a Lidl. It had a large throng (not a queue) milling around waiting for opening at 08:00. I parked a short way away and walked back, arriving just as the doors opened. I didn't bother with a trolley nor a basket. Just moved through the throng and went only to the aisles where what was still unticked on our list was usually displayed. I picked up three items from there usual places, plus a 9-pack of loo rolls which were piled up at various locations. The only item I didn't find was a tin of chopped tomatoes.
Oh well, chilli con quorn can wait...….

Friday: Daughter was going elsewhere by car and asked if I fancied a trip? So I went. On the way back to the car park, we popped into a small Lidl and picked up some fruit, veg and cheese. Walked straight to a self checkout. No queues!

Today: With a clear blue sky decided to walk to yet another Sainsbury, thus getting some exercise and hoping to get the elusive tinned toms. No luck. And some shelves were bare. But again there were no queues.

Maybe the Thursday panic buyers have nowhere to store any more goods?

We couldn't get any tinned tomatoes yesterday in Asda. Heard last night on one of the TV channels that nothing is coming out of Italy - not even goods - so I suppose that is why there is a shortage of tinned tomatoes because most come from there.

Kath. x

When is this shopping frenzy going to stop? The virus is here now and they're potentially spreading it :-( :-( Do the heaving masses realise that?
I wish a tv channel would interview some of them as to what they think they are building up to and when it's happening - because it sure ain't going to be like Christmas!

I can only assume the hoarders are not using what they already have but are still buying whatever they can get not caring some others don't have big stocks of food. I'm hearing people are buying new freezers to store the stuff.

I've heard about runs on freezer sales too Caroline but what I don't get is - are the panic shoppers waiting for an official announcement along the lines of 'the virus is in your street'?

I've seen every excuse from 'shopping for family, care home, elderly relatives, at work, waiting for pay day..... ' so how come empty shelves weren't the norm before?

A report at lunchtime said that Brits have spent an extra £ 1 billion pounds on food in the last 3 weeks.

I do hope it's not wasted.

We have enough for now and will be resourceful and adapt our meals to what is available.
It might not be our first choice, but as long as we can make a meal, we'll be OK.

I'm lucky in that during last growing season with a glut of tomatoes I peeled them an froze bags full,so handy to drop in a mix and thawed out ,drained they go OK with a sausage or bacon,,,,,,,,yes you can freeze fresh toms with peel off.

The Ministry of Defence have been told to be on standby for complete UK lockdown as of Saturday evening at 6pm... No one is to leave their home's unless you work in Front Line Retail or the NHS...

I heard this directly from my neighbour Trigger who is best friends with a guy called Boycey. Boycey knows a guy named Del who drinks down the pub with his uncle Albert. Albert was in the Navy during the war so knows his stuff. ????

OH could only get canned crushed tomatoes at our local grocery store. He bought one small can last night, a brand neither of us had ever seen before, but we wanted it to go with our sole for dinner tonight.

This morning he saw they had larger cans by our usual preferred make, so he bought 1 of those as well.

We have this sole dish often, it needs chopped onions, a can of chopped tomatoes plus the liquid, optional chopped green pepper ......... it is delicious!!!

Still no toilet paper though

And in charge of Rumour Control is......Bob ;-) :-D :-D

:-D :-D :-D

Not sure if it's happening there or not but here they've started paying retail workers in the groceries stores and warehouses etc extra money every hour as a reward for all the extra work they're doing.

I hadn't heard about that here, Caroline!

What a lovely salute to those workers, Caroline. Is it local/state government who have done this?

Latest for NHS workers. Morrisons are dedicating the first hour of shopping to all NHS workers who will have to show their IDs to get in. About time too :-D

I’m quite lucky as I had done a big shop just before the world went mad as my stocks were very low as we had been running up and down the motorway visiting my then terminally in bil.

But I am now getting twitchy about getting gluten free bread and breakfast cereals. With two coeliacs I need a lot.

When I saw the report about an extra billion being spent over three weeks, my thought was that it was not a lot. Of course a billion pounds is a big number but it represents about £5 per week per person, so not much stockpiling there.

Hopefully people will maintain their stockpiles as they may be needed at the end of the year if, as seems likely, no deal is finalised for the withdrawal.

Three of the big supermarket chains in Canada announced over the weekend that they will be paying a $50 bonus every month, and an extra $2 an hour to cashiers who work over 20 hours a week ............ the extra will kick in when they get to the 20 hours.

My wife went to the local Tescos today (I am Housebound 24Hrs a day on Oxygen) so could not go, as usual.. They had set the café out with goods only for the over 70s and she got all we usually buy weekly. There was a limit to the quantities you could buy but she said that everybody was buying sensible and only saw one man refused quantities. Many thanks to the staff at this TESCOS.