Getting the shopping done.

Overheard in the co-op in Uppermill this morning: 

"How are your driving lessons coming along?" 

                    "Not so bad but I'm having trouble parallel parking. It's really hard." 

"Never mind! You only need to do it once to pass your test and then you don't need it ever again. I never parallel park!" 

Wow! I wonder where she drives if she never needs to parallel park. Maybe she is the driver of the car I see parked near our house, regularly a good metre away from the kerb. A lot of people find it hard. My daughter reckons her fiancé can't parallel park properly because he has come to rely almost totally on the sensors on the back and front of his car, which tell him when he is getting too close to another vehicle. 

I appreciate that you might never again be quite so precisely careful a driver as you are when you take your test; familiarity breeds a certain contempt and possibly overconfidence. But as a rule the skills are still required. I wonder what else that lady in the co-op would consider redundant. Reversing round corners? Doing a three point turn? 

I ran to Uppermill first thing to shop at the market, planning to catch the bus back home afterwards, the first bus I could catch without paying. It was a splendid morning for a run. In the event, I finished the shopping so quickly that I also walked half way home before the bus came. It's very hard to run with a bag of fruit over your shoulder but I didn't want to stand almost fifteen minutes at the bus stop in my running gear. Running gear is fine for running but not terribly warm for standing around at bus stops. 

Last week I picked up some jumpers for our grandson in the sale at Gap in Manchester. He wore one jumper just once and the seam began to unravel. He suggested that I should "knit it back together", something that I could quite easily have done, but I was going to Manchester again yesterday and so chose to return it to the shop. Not only did they happily replace the item but they refunded what I had originally paid and charged me yesterday's sale price, another 20% off the marked sale price. So the skirt I had picked up off the sale rail for our younger granddaughter cost me a grand total of 39 pence. 

Now, that was an unusual occurrence because I keep hearing that women's and girls' stuff costs more than men's and boy's stuff. Inequality means that disposable razors are more expensive if you buy them in girly colours to shave your legs and underarms that if you are buying them to shave your face. The same model bike for small children will cost more in girly pink, probably with tassels and streamers and a pretty basket at the front to carry essential girly stuff around in, than in blue or green. There are even ballpoint pens with a price hike. The Bic biro company produces Bics and Bics for Her. You can guess which comes with the higher price tag. 

The moral, of course, is that girls don't need pink bikes, or special Lego for that matter. And any woman daft enough to believe she needs a special "feminine" pen deserves to pay more for it!