Christmas Shopping

I remember back to when I was a Saturday girl at our deli - I worked mornings and Janey did afternoons - and around Christmas time, we used to marvel at just how much food people used to order. We'd know, for example, that their weekly bread order was a vienna loaf and 6 white batch [1] and then on Christmas Eve, the order would be 15 vienna and 30 batch - or something equally ridiculous. Similarly, people used to order pizzas like they were going out of fashion. Why pizzas at Christmas? We didn't know! 10, 15 large pizzas - each different. Hundreds and hundreds of them on Christmas Eve. Mum would have to get extra 'pizza girls' in just to keep the production line going in Christmas week, with grated cheese, chopped ham, and all the trimmings!

Still, I've never really got it.

We have had 2 'at home' Christmases these past 2 years. One with Dan's family, and one with mine. It's been really lovely. But, although I know we had a few extra bits we wouldn't normally buy (eg extra puddings for the Aldridges, or extra wine for the Rossis) it wasn't an order of magnitude bigger than our normal shop for that week - maybe an extra 50 quid. On one shop. The one before they came.

So, I was rather dismayed to pitch up to Sainsblobs one night after work over a month ago - it was the 2nd week in November - to find that I couldn't get a parking space. The cars were actually parked all over on the pavement in spots not normally allocated to parking.

"What's going on?" I thought to myself. Was it a special event on at the White Rose shopping centre? Then I realised - it was a Thursday 'late night'. The first in the run up to Christmas. I couldn't believe it. 6 weeks before Xmas and already the shops were overflowing. Aren't we supposed to be in a recession?

So, we've not been anywhere near a supermarket since then. We've shopped for milk/bread/eggs at the local convenience market - they even do a line in fresh salad items and wine too. We've done one delivery order from the aforementioned supermarket chain (loads of fizzy water, bottles and tins, poor guy) but mostly we've been eating what's been stored in the freezer. I refuse to jump on the consumer bandwagon!


[1] That's "bap" for the southerners and "breadcake" for the Yorkshire folk