Mish Mash Week

So recharging done and I’m back. Whoop-de-doo.

I’ll start with last Sunday. For reasons I won’t get into I had to wake up early and attempted to aid my lack of coherent thought by switching on the BBC news. I was greeted by the sight of Susannah Reid wishing she had access to a time machine or, at least, a thesaurus.

Are we likely to see any significant price-cuts in any items of… significance?

She was, of course, talking to a representative of The Grocer about the Tesco vs. Asda ‘war’. You could actually hear her scanning the sentence ahead and trying to come up with another word or at least be able to switch the first to “major”. One of the responses she got was interesting to me about profit margins and where Tesco can squeeze cuts.

Food manufacturers work with an average of 8.5% profit, while Tesco work with less then 5% and other supermarkets less then 1%.

For such a short statement it’s packed. Start with food manufacturers not producers; I’ve dealt with the big number small number of percentages, unless it’s being used as a percentage of the whole it’s meaningless, then the fact that Tesco have a less then 5% margin compared to the others 1% margin. Unless the 5% is equal to the 1% (which means they’re paying more at cost) it just goes to show that they’ll charge whatever the market will bear. Finally to rewrite the headline “Two rival companies compete in free market” Woah hold the front page. Why is this news? Shouldn’t they be doing this all the time?


Anyway early on Sunday I find myself in Kiddy in need of some stocks that, ironically, I can only pick up at Sainsbury’s. If you’ve never hung out in a supermarket car-park before opening time I’d recommend it. I got there at half-nine and parked in the bay furthest from the supermarket. I had plenty of choices in the closer bay, but for some strange reason the trolley parks are roofed in for that section. As it was a nice sunny day I didn’t want to be sitting in either my car or under plastic, so I parked next to one of the open bars and sat like a kid swinging my feet from the bar.

Plenty of people sitting in cars, plenty of empty cars. Around quarter-to-ten more staff showed up and started parking in the main car-park. Now either they don’t have their own spaces, or it’s full. They all got out and headed towards the staff entrance on the side causing me to think of “Dawn of the Dead”. Interesting to watch the number walk past the others up to the doors and then look confused as to why they weren’t open. Then five minutes before opening the car-park starts to fill and a small crowd gathered at the doors.

I wandered up and sat on the bench outside, a masterpiece of design in that you can’t get comfortable on it (hence my swinging from the trolley park). It’s quite low, which causes me to either want to stretch forward to back. Forward gets uncomfortable, and it has no back-rest and a large gap between it and the glass front of the store.

Ten o’clock came and passed at which point the staff realised that the doors on the right had stuck. I waited until the crowd had passed then sauntered in at the back.


Ah Tuesday, it rained a bit. Not much, just enough for me to welcome a stray who found themselves stranded in Stourport. With a choice of four roads, one was too deeply flooded, another the embankment had collapsed, one he tried to ford and gave up when water started to come in through the doors, and the final option he didn’t try when he saw a 4x4 go through it with water rising above its wheels. I had a spare bed the decision was simple.

My father decided he wanted some pictures printed and chose Sunday afternoon as the best time to do it – no light cyan, no light magenta, no way of getting hold of any. One list and a “You want some prints, buy these first” and he’ll get some today I hope.

Reminds me that I still haven’t posted the Redstone Marsh pictures <sigh> I’ll look at it tomorrow.


I came across the LibraryThing book catalogue a while ago and always meant to take a closer look and this week I got a chance. While I could type in every book individually it does accept ISBN file input.

So all I needed was to make a list. I started with the tall-book shelves, collected comics and the like, which are stacked ‘normally’ that is horizontally-stacked spine outward. I’ve managed to do four shelves at 229 books so only another three of those shelves to go. Then the hardback shelves, vertically-stacked base outward; only seven of those. Then the paperback shelves, vertically-stacked spine outward double rowed; only seven of those as well. Oh and then the floor-stacked pile and the few in drawers. At this rate I’m sure to finish sometime this year <laughs>


Terrible night last night, I dreamt I was in some sort of supermarket aisle and someone was trying to run me over with some sort of spiked trolley. I threw something at them then scrambled to the other side trying to clamber on to a freezer compartment. Scrambling for a torch, which I knew wasn’t there, I pushed things out of the way to get to it. I couldn’t see it, perhaps as my eyes were closed, but I could feel it – something was wrong, the base had detached from the reflector and bulb. I had the base in my left hand and the reflector and bulb connection in my right, but the top was stuck to some rectangular block and the whole thing wouldn’t move very far.

I tried to snap the top from the block and woke up to find myself sitting at the base of my bed with my quilt wrapped around my legs leaning towards my dressing table with my electric toothbrush and charger in my hands. I was glad I hadn’t snapped the charger in half or pulled the cord out. I put it back leaned back onto my bed and leaned forward very quickly – reaching back I removed my hairbrush that I’d obviously swept aside towards the trolley maniac. Leaned back, leaned forward again to try and find my pillows that had obviously been the first things I’d aimed at the trolley maniac and were now lying on the floor. Leant back… slept.