You know how I said last Tuesday that Tesco lacked some of the usual excitement on my own?  Well, I really need to watch what I say.

I left home a tiny bit late as I had quite a few work bits that couldn’t wait until the evening, and (possibly) as a result, the M25 was more chaotic than usual which meant I got to Tesco a bit late.  And as I got out the car I realised I’d left all my shopping bags at home, so I went through the car boot where I had a few odd ones with random stuff in them or disabilities like one handle and one with a slight hole in the bottom that I’d never got around to throwing out.  I chucked all the bits in the bags loose into the boot and set off on my solo expedition.

It turns out that  just a little while later than we usually go, pretty much all Bumpkinsville residents over the age of 70 descend on Tesco for a group outing; it was carnage.

The good news is that in your late 40’s, without small children or older parents  to manoeuvre, you become almost invisible and while that means people don’t even think of moving out of your way as they put the world to rights with Betty from Bingo in the milk and cheese aisle, you can zoom around people too.

And zoom I did.  Until I reached the tills where all these older people, who all presumably eat like locusts, were queued to with trolleys piled high, biscuits – and a surprising amount of wine –  balancing precariously.  As we know from experience, the lovely cashiers take their time with the oldies and have a lovely chat with them as they scan, so with four trolleys queueing at each till, the only option was the self service.  A decision that everyone under the age of 60 in the shop had taken.  So I got in line and snapped a photo to send to dad with an apology that I was going to be late:

And when it did get to me, I put through my shopping, paid and packed, then put through Mum and Dads shopping, paid and packed, and then I put through the rest of my stuff that had been under Mum and Dads stuff and paid and packed that and while I was doing that, feeling rather frazzled someone walked up to me and said:

‘Are you Helen?’ Then helpfully answered themselves before I could with ‘You are Helen’.

I don’t know about you, but if I see someone out of their usual context I have no hope of recognising them, even less of remembering their name, so I was flummoxed as to who they were and how they knew me.  It turned out it was the Mum of a client, who is (like most of my clients and their parents) very lovely.  Which was lucky as I was not portraying ‘therapist at leisure’ vibes. More ‘Bordering on out of control and ready to open the wine I’ve just put through the till…finally’ vibes.  She didn’t seem to judge me though, in fact she told me she’d been recommending my services to friends.  So I pulled myself together, attempted to look like the sort of person you’d continue to recommend to your friends despite meeting them in Tesco with three lots of shopping a somewhat frazzled expression, and one eye on the wine, and said thank you and goodbye.  I followed a little behind her as I pushed the trolley out and….set all the blimnin’ alarms off.  Of course I did.

The security lady asked to see my receipts.  I gave her all three and said (possibly a little tightly) that at this point I was happy to just leave the lot with her and go home. Lady looked at the receipts, looked at me, and decided it was probably best not to poke the monster and said I could just leave…with all three lots of shopping packed into the array of partially useful bags.

See?  That’s at least two weeks worth of excitement. Hopefully I’ve banked some too…

When I finally got to Mum and Dads, Mum and I rushed off to see her sister.  And if I’m totally honest with you, after settling them with coffee and cakes I told them I had something to do and…sat in the car for thirty minutes to do a bit of crochet.  That was partly to catch my breath and partly because Mum doesn’t often chat to people without someone else there too.  And she usually gets that someone else to do the talking.  I thought it would be nice not to do that.  I sneaked back in quietly half an hour later and stood in the hall way listening.  Mum and her sister were chatting away.  I have no idea if either was listening to the other but they seemed quite happy, and when I walked in it turned out they were looking at old photos.

Old family photos and learning the stories behind them are one of my favourite things.  My aunt said next time we go she’ll get some more out, so I’m looking forward to that.  Mum can’t remember (or can’t express?) the stories behind them, but with my aunts prompts she did remember some bits.  Like this: 🙂