Hi Everyone
It seems hard to believe that it is four years this week since Boris came on TV to tell us to "Stay at Home" due to the worldwide coronavirus. We obviously spotted the warning signs before he did as we had pretty much been in lockdown for a week when he made that announcement. We then spent over three months in isolation as we waited for the scientists to provide us with a vaccine. Why am I telling you all this Rubbish? Well, four years ago as well as a virus threatening our lives, something else almost unique happened, we had only one rainy day for the next eight weeks. This enabled us to not only have some freedom in our garden but we refelted our summerhouse ( that's a posh word for shed), fitted rainwater gutters and spouts into a water butt. built an extension to the shed and many other jobs in the garden and inside our home. After that very convenient dry spring which helped us through those lonely months, this year has been the wettest spring for many years with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel resulting in frustration that almost no annual maintenance work can be started. I also
have to remind myself that I am now four years older so it may be a good thing that the weather is so bad.
As most of you Rubbish readers will know I lived with the Senior and Junior partners for the first twenty two years of my life at the Fruit, Vegetable, Flower, Game, and Lolly shop although I was there before the lollies. Those were the days when everything was loose, wonky and, in the case of root vegetables, dirty, Those were the days when children would come into the shop to buy a bruised penny apple and if I had an apple and did not eat the core, some of my friends would. The customers would have a hessian shopping bag and apart from fruit in a brown paper bag, nothing was packaged. As you know the Senior Partner was tight with money so even the use of a small brown paper bag was at a premium. It was much cheaper for us to battle with the local fish and chip shop for old newspapers to wrap the food in. With that background and the fact that I had a Deliveroo bike to deliver orders long before the word Deliveroo was invented and the Main Contractor was an occasional reluctant shop worker, we of all people, should be buying our fresh fruit and vegetables from a local shop or market stall. The problem is that back in the days of our shop there were two other fruit and veg shops within shouting distance. According to the Senior Partner neither were as good and neither sold overpriced lollies. The point is that now there are none. The nearest fresh fruit and vegetable shop is a 10 mile round trip in the car while the nearest market stall selling fresh fruit on a weekly basis is a twenty five mile round trip away. Our nearest supermarkets, where wonky is now a buzz word, are just fifteen minutes walk away where everything is packaged with acres of climate changing clear plastic and polystyrene. We all know where we should buy our fresh food from but how many of us are willing to accept the extra costs of car travel and the time involved? Sadly you can also substitute the words fruit and vegetables with meat, fish and cheese etc..
This week the son of a wealthy man spent twenty minutes goading, humiliating and insulting a guardsman at the entrance to Buckingham Palace in an attempt to get a reaction from the guard so that he could video the incident in the hope that it would go viral on the internet. Despite all his efforts, he produced no reaction from the guard. Obviously, one man had received better parenting and lessons in discipline than the other.
Just a Thought :
My friend had a stack of toilet rolls fall on him in a supermarket this week. He is OK though, just soft tissue damage.
During Covid lockdown, I found a lady sitting on my couch. Apparently, it was my wife. She seemed nice.
My friend has his sister and her kids living with him. He is always woken up by a spoilt brat screaming her lungs out. Her kids are not much better either.
Brian
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