LT arrived back just moments before I got home from the supermarket, having suddenly realised I was in need of a couple of things and reckoned I’d just got time – in fact, I think we’d have arrived simultaneously if it hadn’t been for mustard.

Colmans now have a mild mustard, apparently.  And the Co-op had taken away all their stock of Colman’s real ready-made mustard (I realise that is actually an oxymoron and the only real stuff is when you take powder and make it properly, but you know what I mean) so that you were forced to buy the watered-down version.  Or maybe it’s got more flour in – less mustard, that’s for sure.  Anyway, I clearly wasn’t going to buy it and so had to buy own brand instead.  We’ll give it a whirl.  If it’s no good, I’ll buy it somewhere else entirely and the Co-op will have lost a bit of my custom.  I do mostly shop there for general household stuff – whilst going to the butcher, baker, greengrocer etc where possible – because it’s a good source of employment in the town and I try to shop locally when I can.

But the naivety of thinking that, if they restrict choice, you’ll meekly buy what you can get from that one shop.  There are many more options nowadays, of course and the final option is to do without.  Which I certainly will if I can’t get what I want and there isn’t an acceptable substitute

There’s a very local store that sells all sorts of things, from DIY stuff to animal feed and necessities – I bought the chicken’s feeders and drinkers there, I get items of hardware, wood preservative for fences, wellington boots, all sorts of things.  But, from having been good value, it now isn’t, frankly.  About a year and a half ago, I discovered that, by driving less than three miles, I could save two pounds a bag on chicken feed.  The same brand and size of sack, I’m sure they were buying them in at much the same price, yet the difference was (at the time, the price has gone down slightly since at both places) £7.95 to £6.00.  I changed my allegiance and bought three bags at a time to justify the petrol.  When I needed a sprayer, their price was nearly £100 and other shops I went to in town varied down to about £60.  I bought it from the internet for less than half that – i.e. little over a quarter of the local price, though not the same brand and I don’t know about quality; the one I got is fine.  Similarly pond liner, everything we’ve looked at.  So I do buy there if it’s really convenient and not very expensive in the first place, but it’s so easy to shop around nowadays.

This place used to be constantly busy and now seems to have few customers.  Yet I want to give them my custom rather than order online.  They just need to meet their client halfway.

Anyway.  I didn’t know I was going to write about that.  Lovely Tim is home, as I said, and things are right again at the Zeddary.  Though, as I mentioned to him, the one advantage of the week has been to have had enough space in bed.  One small cat and one husband take a disproportionately big part of a kingsize bed.  Although, if I’m happily asleep all night tonight, I’ll be unaware of that.  Innit.