Bedlam

It was absolute bedlam at Chatsworth yesterday. The car park was full, absolutely chockers. Worse than it was before Christmas. I hopped out of the car to go and make a start, girding my loins for chaos inside the shop. The Builder went to find a parking space.

It was busy, but not hugely so in the veg and fish section. There were, it is true, lots of people hanging around the butchery, but I wasn't in need of meat so wasn't particularly perturbed.

The Builder reappeared.

We headed off to gather the bread and milk and cream - and found that the checkout queue had snaked its way all the way up through the dairy and deli areas to the bakery!!! Much, much worse than Christmas.

We joined the queue and collected what we needed as we queued past it!

The card reading machines had all gone down. They were having to swipe everyone's cards by hand. It took AGES!

We put our provisions in the car and then, without much hope, went to see how long the queue was for a table in the restaurant. To our surprise, there wasn't really one and we only had to wait a few minutes for a table to come free. But thereafter the queue grew and grew and grew. We had clearly timed it exactly right!

And it was slightly chaotic trying to pay when we had finished. Their card reader wasn't working either and their swiping device wasn't very happy about being brought out of retirement!! Fortunately, we had cash and took no time to pay at all.

Then we took some flattened cardboard boxes to Freyja, chatted to her and to Mark for a bit and then came home again. We came back through Bradway, Barlow and Cutthorpe. A while ago we had to divert that way when the bypass was closed and all the traffic was going through Dronfield. We said at the time that this was probably a very pretty route i naylight. Yesterday seemed an ideal opportunity to find out. And it is a very pretty drive - though it takes nearly twice as long to get home. Still, we weren't in any hurry and sometimes it's nice to dally a little and take the scenic routes through life.

We had thought we might get out into the garden this morning. There are storms and tempests and all sorts forecast for later today and the early part of this week but this morning looked as if it would be ok. We weren't planning to do all that much, a bit of tidying up and some light digging. Then The Builder took the scraps down to the compost heap and came back saying that it was FREEZING outside and the wind was even colder. The temperature has dropped quite a bit. It was two or three degrees when we got up. It's minus one now. (and there's a considerable wind chill to factor in as well). No gardening for us. I shall make a full English breakfast instead. And soup. And perhaps even a cake.