Sometimes it doesn't even give you lemons*
Apr. 8th, 2010 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI am a shopper by instinct and by training. Even as a little boy, among my best times was always the walk into town on a Saturday morning with two bob pocketmoney in my hand. As a teen skiving school, I was entirely happy to spend half a day just prowling the department stores and bookshops.
Where I live, where I've lived all my adult life is almost ideally designed to suit this habit. As a young man, a young novelist looking for displacement opportunities, I could and would shop three times a day: once into town, once to the supermarket, once again to the local stores. I'm a little more disciplined these days, but these days half my work is done actually in town, at the Lit & Phil; of course my walk home takes me through the shops. I really shouldn't have been surprised t'other day to leave the library at one o'clock and not make it home till three.
These days, I do - usually - try not to go out shopping again, once I'm home from town. But, thing is, that walk home is bizarre, by Newcastle standards: once I've left the town centre, I literally pass no shops at all until I reach my own front door. No corner grocery stores, no supermarkets, no garage forecourts, nothing. Twenty minutes' walk, utterly devoid of retail opportunity.
Which wouldn't matter if I were an organised shopper, if I made lists and remembered to take them and then to buy whatever I had listed. I do none of these things, in the reverse order: if I make a list and take it, I forget to refer to it; more often, if I make a list I forget to take it; mostly, I don't make lists.
So, frequently, I realise halfway home that I've forgotten to buy something. Sometimes it's crucial. I can go back into town again, but I hate retracing my steps; or I can go out shopping again later, with all that that implies for loss of writing-time etc.
As today. I remembered mushrooms, I bought three pounds of mushrooms; I remembered to go to the bank; I forgot to buy any lemons.
Eek. I forgot lemons yesterday, also. Hence yesterday no lemon for the cod roes, no lemon for the gin, no lemon for the chicken. Can I bear such another day, or shall I lose an hour and go shopping...?
*And then suddenly it does.
In mid-uncertainty, I remember: the last time I ran out of lemons, some smart person advised cutting up a handful and freezing them. I have lemons!
Where I live, where I've lived all my adult life is almost ideally designed to suit this habit. As a young man, a young novelist looking for displacement opportunities, I could and would shop three times a day: once into town, once to the supermarket, once again to the local stores. I'm a little more disciplined these days, but these days half my work is done actually in town, at the Lit & Phil; of course my walk home takes me through the shops. I really shouldn't have been surprised t'other day to leave the library at one o'clock and not make it home till three.
These days, I do - usually - try not to go out shopping again, once I'm home from town. But, thing is, that walk home is bizarre, by Newcastle standards: once I've left the town centre, I literally pass no shops at all until I reach my own front door. No corner grocery stores, no supermarkets, no garage forecourts, nothing. Twenty minutes' walk, utterly devoid of retail opportunity.
Which wouldn't matter if I were an organised shopper, if I made lists and remembered to take them and then to buy whatever I had listed. I do none of these things, in the reverse order: if I make a list and take it, I forget to refer to it; more often, if I make a list I forget to take it; mostly, I don't make lists.
So, frequently, I realise halfway home that I've forgotten to buy something. Sometimes it's crucial. I can go back into town again, but I hate retracing my steps; or I can go out shopping again later, with all that that implies for loss of writing-time etc.
As today. I remembered mushrooms, I bought three pounds of mushrooms; I remembered to go to the bank; I forgot to buy any lemons.
Eek. I forgot lemons yesterday, also. Hence yesterday no lemon for the cod roes, no lemon for the gin, no lemon for the chicken. Can I bear such another day, or shall I lose an hour and go shopping...?
*And then suddenly it does.
In mid-uncertainty, I remember: the last time I ran out of lemons, some smart person advised cutting up a handful and freezing them. I have lemons!