Raid

Last night was a skirmish. This morning, Zoe and I conducted a full raid. I collected her at 7:30, and we went straight to Sainsbury's, where we shopped for what would be needed for Christmas (as opposed to the normal week's shopping). As we passed the meat van (a butcher who parks by the Pink Pub on Saturday morning to sell fresh meat), the car park was rammed full, and people were queuing around the corner. This did not bode well for Sainsbury's. We needn't have worried, however, the car park was almost empty and so was the store (much like last night). We whizzed around the aisles, filling our two trolleys and were home an hour after setting off. Result!

I joined the weekly Zoom call with my cousins. There didn't seem to be a specific theme this week; it was just general chit-chat. When the call was finished, I reviewed the receipt from the earlier shopping trip. It was a good job that I did. I found 2 anomalies: a carton of beer, discounted to £7.99, had been charged at £13.50, and more significantly, Zoe's staff discount seemed to have been applied at the wrong rate. I took the receipt back to Zoe (with the carton of beer), and she said she would deal with it when she got to work later.

We drove up to The Refectory at Milford. We had arranged to meet Jan and John for lunch. It was a lovely, bright morning for a drive, and we had an excellent run through. We were just finishing a coffee when Jand and John arrived. Like last weekend, we had a lovely lunch. Di had some courgette fritters to start with, and these were followed by a ciabatta filled with hot turkey, bacon and brie, and she finished off with Xmas pudding. I started with their sticky bang-bang pork bites and followed up with a venison, bacon and port pie; for dessert, I had an apple crumble. We chatted throughout the meal, catching up on Xmas plans, family health, and family jobs. It was a very pleasant couple of hours.

We arrived home at 4 p.m. and had a quiet couple of hours with our Kindles before switching on the TV. Mid-evening, there was a rap at the door as Amazon delivered one of our last batches of Xmas presents. We finished the evening watching a documentary about the Big Freeze of winter 62/63. It was so interesting seeing a more UK-wide view of that winter, as opposed to our specific memories from our childhood.