After the serious business of poetry, we get back to the sort of blog I am better known for – observations on buying groceries via the internet. I am never afraid to tackle the big issues . . .

The TESCO shopping arrived last night. It featured several substitutions, including roses. I had ordered a small bunch of roses for Julia, but they had been out off stock. Nothing grand, just a small £3 bunch. The environmental cost of flying flowers from Africa is huge, but I try to keep our impact down so I think I can be forgiven a few flowers now and then. Anyway, nobody is perfect.

They sent two £10 bouquets. I had, it seems, ordered two bunches by accident. When I was told that one colour was out of stock I should have left them to substitute with another colour. Instead I assumed they wouldn’t send any and ordered again. They didn’t have any £3 bunches, even after the change of colour I made (bunch, by the way, is probably slightly misleading as a term for £3 worth of roses). So they sent two £10 bunches. I can only assume that the £10 bunches were at the end of their shelf life., as they only charged me £6. Sometimes they are good like that. We currently have more roses than we really need so will be sharing them tomorrow. Even though I’m annoyed with myself for over-ordering, it’s still nice to get a bonus.

Something similar happened with the mushrooms and I ended up with two small packs instead of one medium – extra mushrooms for the same price. Sometimes these things work out. I’m on TESCO again because ASDA really messed up last week. I didn’t mention it because there was no convenient place to do so, but they forgot to include the frozen food.  That meant we had no burgers or veggie burgers, which meant a substantial amount of the menu planning went out of the window. They should, as I pointed out to them, have immediately sent us replacements as it was a mistake, not a case of low supplies. The refund they sent was not an adequate response for a hole in the menu. This is the trouble with shopping on the internet, a silly mistake can ruin a week’s planning.

Flowers – detail

To quote W. H. Davis –What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. I expect he would have included random flower deliveries if they had supermarkets in his day.  Life should include unexpected deliveries of flowers, as I said to Julia, otherwise what’s the point of it?

Which reminds me. We had a poem at the funeral on Thursday. I’m not keen on most of the ones they use. If I should fall from my perch in the near future, can you please do me a favour and spend a day of quoting this one to people. It needs quoting more widely.