Granddaughter Number Two and I went on a shopping trip to Manchester today. We had planned to go on Wednesday but her anxious older sister had her anxiety issue about the plumber’s visit and my presence was required at her house instead. So we rescheduled our plans for today, involving some messing around.
I got up and out to catch the 9.27 bus from our crossroads to my daughter’s house. I set off in time to walk a couple of bus stops’ distance so that by the time I caught the bus it would already be 9.30 and my old biddy’s bus pass would be valid. I have known the odd stickler for correctness to refuse to accept its use even if only a few minutes before 9.30am pm a weekday. Some people just love to have authority, even over something like the use of bus passes! But a brisk walk at the start of the day never goes amiss. It was, however, extremely cold!
I arrived at my daughter’s by 10.15 or thereabouts (the bus follows a very convoluted route and today everyone and their grandmother was going shopping, causing the bus to pause at each bus stop) and we then had to wait for delivery of a supermarket online food-shop before we could go anywhere. To compensate for that my son-in-law (who for some reason could not deal with the food delivery) gave us a lift to the Ashton tram stop. We were on our way!
Once in Manchester we were very efficient. Having made an approximate list of what we were looking for, we were able to move from Christmas market stall to shop to Christmas market stall to shop without too much doubling back and retracing our steps.
At one point Granddaughter Number Two got very excited to discover a branch of Tim Horton’s in the city centre. I had been aware of some excitement when this shop was about to open but I had no idea what it sold. It turns put to be a Canadian restaurant chain specialising in coffee, doughnuts and other fast-food items. It is Canada's largest quick-service restaurant chain, with 5,352 restaurants in 15 countries, as of June 30, 2022. It seems to have been around forever in Canada, well, since the 1960s, but now it’s a big thing in the UK, at least if you like dough nuts. Personally I can take them (if absolutely fresh) or leave them (most of the time) but my daughter’s section of the family loves them.
When I was s sixth-former, the school canteen started to sell freshly made jam doughnuts. None of the fancy sort with cinnamon, or chocolate brownies flavour, or multi-colour sprinkles on icing. I grew used to the jam-filled ones, which had to be eaten carefully if you were not to squirt strawberry jam over yourself or someone sitting close to you. Now I seem to have grown out of them altogether.
Granddaughter Number Two, however, was very pleased and vowed to return to the shop as we eventually made our back back to tram stop in Piccadilly Gardens. She planned to buy a box of doughnuts to share with her siblings. We did this. The shop appears to be a veritable model of modern catering, marketing and serving. You feed your order into a machine, pay with your card, receive a numbered ticket and then wait for your number to be called out by one of the few human staff. A minor miracle of efficient staff deployment but a little off-putting to those of us who like to interact rather more with those who serve in shops.
But before we reached that point in the proceedings we had successfully completed most of our shopping. We had stopped for refreshment some time after midday. My plan was to have no more than a coffee, with maybe a small cake or cookie of some kind. Granddaughter Number Two revealed that she had had no breakfast and so we selected a “classic cheese toastie” for her. Unfortunately we did not read the labelling in detail when it arrived we found it also contained lettuce - not a bad addition in my opinion but rendering the toasted sandwich inedible to my no-vegetables-of fruit granddaughter. So I ate the sandwich and Granddaughter number two took sustenance from a large packet of crisps! The toasted sandwich, by the way, was excellent - if you like warm lettuce with your runny cheese.
We made our way back to her house, checked we each had the correct selection of purchases and sat and put the world to rights while it went dark outside and I decided that my daughter, who had been out and about on adventures of her own, was not going to,turn up any time soon to give me a lift home. We checked bus times and I set off in time to have no more than a few minutes to wait for a bus home.
On the whole a good day! I seem to have Christmas presents organised. All I need to do now is wrap them all! And then I need to start to think about food!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment