The past week has been physically challenging. I’ve been tidying shelves and replenishing stock on shelves that reach from the floor to well over my head height. I can legitimately state that I can’t do the top shelf unless they have a special steps for me, but the lower shelves, that require kneeling down, I can’t very well state that I’m too old; I’m on probation for quite a number of months, so have to grin and bear it, but my knees are complaining. Still, it beats being held hostage on the tills. Twice, my manager has given me work, a lot of it, and told me not to go on the tills, only for her manager to countermand this and drag me away, kicking and screaming (metaphorically speaking) to work on the tills. Everyone ends up cross, the work I was supposed to do doesn’t get done that day, and it really isn’t a good way to deal with staff in my opinion. It does seem like the till supervisors don’t have enough staff, or either don’t schedule the work efficiently. Either way, I end up doing work that I’m really not keen on. The music is too loud near the tills, it’s non-stop customers, noisy tills that keep going off momentarily is response to the unrelenting workload I suspect, and don’t even get me started on ‘grabby’ customers who try and take the produce out of your hands before you can release them. One even scratched me! As soon as they were gone, I used copious amounts of hand sanitiser and made the next customer wait a moment. Breathe…

Sunday was a good day; quieter and no till work and I managed to do a little shopping in my break. My colleague had picked up a box of vegetables for 50 pence, and I quickly checked if there were any more, to no avail. They were marking down bread that expired that day, and I spent 75 pence in total and got a small seeded loaf - love these, a bag of 6 croissants, and a piece of stilton; a bargain! Most of these ended up safely in my freezer. Later this week I have 2 evening shifts, and I’ll use my break to see if I can get any more reduced produce.

Some of the customers do make me laugh; one young woman had pointed to a sign and asked where she could get the cooked chickens on the sign. I asked her to repeat the question, thinking I had lost the plot, and her husband repeated same. I approached the sign, pointed to the table under it, and said do you mean these? Well, they both laughed and apologised but I laughed too and told them I’m just as bad. Most of the staff, and customers, are really nice and I am starting to recognise repeat customers who always say hello. So, I’m settling in it seems.

The Ship’s dog has been beside himself with joy each and every time I come home from work and it is funny, if a trifle noisy. It’s nice that at his age he can still get excited about anything lol. The Lifeboat had a blip, one that I hope won’t occur again, in that driving home one day I checked my speed to find I was doing zero miles an hour. Not possible in a moving car. I tapped the gauge, no joy, and drove carefully to the garage who told me they are unable to help and to try the dealer who of course are ‘temporarily closed’ possibly due to the virus. The next day I hooked up the Sat Nav to correctly gauge my speed only for the speedometer to be working again. Since then, fingers crossed, it’s been working fine. Strange…

We’ve had some heavy showers here which will do the garden good and dampen down the pollen and dust. We’re forecast same for a few days, then I hope we’ll return to sunshine once again. It certainly makes things look nicer when the sun is shining, lifts our spirits, and hastens bulbs from their sleep. The bluebells in the gravel bed are blooming nicely and I’m sure there’s more than last year, the fruit bushes are flowering with the promise of blueberries for later in the year, and even the small loganberry has sprouted a few blossoms. The raspberries, not so much but they’re young.

Take care, be safe, and enjoy the sunshine if you have it.