Chapter 239 : Shopping (part two)

We gradually fill up our trolley and wander from aisle to aisle. 

We round the display of canned fruit into the next aisle. A strong powerful uniformed man stands with arms crossed loitering.  He's trolleyless and he's not buying anything.  On his lapel are the words 'loss prevention officer.' 

He frightens me and I pretend he doesn’t exist.

A young female lady ex-patient suddenly appears at the end of the aisle with her partner.  He struts protectively.  I don't know him but I can see enough to know that she is not going to acknowledge me.  Suits me.  I don't want him to say to her, "Who's that?"

 

Round the toilet paper pyramid from cereals into the aisle selling cleaners, laundry needs and prewash.

Kay stands by herself between walls of groceries. Looking very forlorn. She raises her arms and says: I want to hug you.

I bend down and we hug each other between the walls of laundry detergents.

A lady walks past us with her precious child. She says to her daughter: Don’t you ever do that. You know what men are like.

I am grateful that Kay has not heard a thing and that she has given me something precious. A priceless hug.

In the fruit and veggie section I grab a piece of glad wrap from the rolls of gladwrap.  I try and open the gladwrap to make a bag to put some apples in.  I’m sure there must be trick to this.  Perhaps I've got the wrong end.  Nobody else seems to be having my trouble. In the end I put the gladwrap in my pocket and buy a pre-packaged bag of apples.

We head towards the ‘12 items or less’ queue.  My wife is worried.  She sees someone who has more than 12 items in her trolley. I think please don’t say anything. It is not our job to count how many items are in each trolley.

In the meantime, my wife sees a better lane.  A lane we should be in.  She goes for it.  Grabs the trolley and shifts lanes.  A dangerous move. 

In the new lane I see an another ex-patient in the queue ahead of us.  I know I know her. She looks at me and smiles.

Me: “Hello Sophie."

Her face reddens.  Embarrassed and stunned.

Me: “Ah sorry, sorry.”

I stumble and mumble and try to think of her correct name. She helps me, “It's Sarah."

I apologise again: “I'm so sorry."

"Don't worry I do that all the time," she says as she takes her groceries from her trolley.

I stand and wonder.  How could I be so stupid? I can’t keep on apologising. Perhaps once is enough.

My wife isn't interested.  She is scanning her eyes over the magazines and picks one with a picture of distant Royals and the headline “We want a normal life.” She discards the magazine and unhappily makes a fatal mistake. She looks back at the lane we were in and sees that it is moving much quicker than our present stationary queue.

We finally unload our produce.  The checkout-chick stares at a vegetable and says, “My mind has gone blank.”

I bite my lip and manage to answer without a trace of sarcasms.

Me: “It’s a cabbage.”

Checkout-chick.: “Thank you.”

We start packing the produce.  It is our fashion to buy non-disposable reusable bags and then leave them at home.  Once again this is what we do, so we buy bags.  The checkout chicks always seem to have braces.  I could ask her about her braces. I might be able to help her.  I don’t. I get the feeling she might want to talk about her braces but not to me.

We are almost finished.  Just need to walk past the statue of a guide dog with the slot in his head and the sign saying, ‘please support guide dogs,’ through the automatically opening doors, ride the trolley down the ramp, pack the groceries in the car, ram the trolley into the rear of the other trolleys, drive home, listen to my wife say, “You can’t find anything you want nowadays,” and then unpack the groceries.

Chapter 238: Shopping (part one)

We drive to the supermarket. First decision is: Where should we park?   We drive down a one-way road past a perfectly good spot. If we keep going and come up the next road we might get a better spot.  A spot near the bay to put our trolley in.  I am reminded of a lady, who never wants the closest spot.  She always parks in the furthermost, darkest corner of the parking area; so that her car will not be damaged by other cars. 

  

We enter the supermarket.  We now arrive at decision number two: Which trolley should we take?  I give a couple of trolleys a test drive and take one that seems to obey orders. 

We begin shopping. I push the trolley and Bruce—you know what young kids are like— is really irritating me running up and down the aisles and jumping on the front of the trolley waiting for me to push it. 

He keeps asking all the time: Can I have some chewing gum?  Can I have some chewing gum?

All the time.

He is trying to wear me down and I just ignore him and we kept going up and down the aisles putting in the usual stuff. Past the barn-fed, organic and free range eggs inviting decision number three.  He hangs onto the side of the trolley and drags it skew whiff narrowly avoiding a very purposeful special’s hunter.

And then I have a brain wave. My wife and I can gather all the stuff. Bruce can push the trolley. We will all the items to Bruce who will put them in the trolley.

I tell Bruce you are in charge of the trolley. When we give you something put it in the trolley. That will keep him occupied. Now I can leisurely stroll around reading food labels.

So we do this for a while and I settle down wandering around in a daze; then I look up and see he’s put a cereal pack in another trolley which is standing alone and abandoned between the cereals and the soya milks.

So I say to Bruce: Bruce which trolley did you put the cereal in? Even though I know the answer.

It’s obvious he’s put our cereal in someone else’s trolley. He doesn’t answer he just stands there, sheepishly hoping I’ll forget what I’ve just said. Fat chance. 

I repeat myself: Did you put the cereal in that trolley over there?

This time he nods. If I was thinking I would have just gone and got another packet but I wasn’t thinking.

I lean over and grab the packet from someone else’s trolley; then I stop; I slowly look up and see a lady staring at me. With my hands in her trolley. She silently stares at me — with eyes like Rottweilers—and I turn and gesticulate at Bruce, “Look he did it.”

She silently moves closer. She keeps on staring at me and keeps coming closer.

I say to the lady: He put this packet in your trolley. Look Bruce tell her what you did.

Bruce made these exaggerated chewing movements and pretends he can’t hear me. 

I then say: Okay you can have some chewing gum. Tell this lady how you put the cereal in her trolley.

Bruce says: What flavour?

I then say: You can have any flavour you like. Now tell the lady.

Bruce says nothing.

I say: You are not going to get in trouble. Just say it was an accident. It’s alright.

He shrugs his shoulders as if it’s to say who cares and turns around. The lady has reattached herself to her trolley and gone. I can see her back—which is full of withering contempt for men shopping—disappearing behind the temporary display of canned tomatoes:

Right that’s it Bruce. No chewing gum for you mate.

Meanwhile my wife has been adding chocolates and biscuits to our trolley.  They don’t break her diet restrictions because they are never on the shopping list.

I rearrange the food to hide the embarrassing junk. I place a packet of Rolled Oats on top of the chocolates and we head on.

Chapter 237: Can I tell you about Hobart

My recent travels have involved seeing and meeting people.

One man asked me about Hobart.
This is what me memory tells me I said to him.

Hobart is on the edge of the world. It is a melange of suburbs. The suburbs merge gradually into surrounding native bush and farms. Everybody lives in and loves their own house with a small front garden. All are unique. Different colour, style and gardens. Views of either the river or mountain mean high status.

The streets around the houses coalesce and become bigger and bigger and become major arteries draining and feeding the CBD. In the CBD the roads clog and traffic slows. All around the world people complain about traffic and Hobart joins them and contains people sitting in their cars complaining about the traffic.

The docks are the centre of Hobart. They are a delightful mix of working boats, pleasure boats, wandering tourists and socialising locals. And sea kayaks and seals. And a tempting view of the mountain. All tourists look at the mountain and want to go up it. Unfortunately the road up is becoming busier and struggling to cope.

Hobart is both united and divided by a river and a bridge.
The river widens and becomes beautiful looking beaches containing cold water.
There is a memorial to those who lost their lives when the bridge was destroyed by a boat in 1975. No memorial to the designers, builders and renovators of the bridge.

In Hobart we always want teams in national leagues. We don’t need to win or prove we are better. Just that we can play the game with them. That we are just as good. Not dumb, stupid, inferior or inbred.
Many of us support a Melbourne based team in the AFL. We don’t support those interstate based teams.

Mona: A new modern art gallery arising due to one man.
Full of modern art from around the world which is all the personal preference of one man who rapaciously took money from gambling addicts, around the world, who were not as clever as him. Very little modern local art displayed.

Mona also runs some festivals during the year. They have not arisen organically from the local community. They have been bestowed upon us.

We love Mona because it brings tourists, tells the world that we are sophisticated, not two headed bogans, and sells good coffee. We love Mona so long as we don’t have to explain what the exhibits mean.

Us Hobartians are notorious for being Nimbies. Whatever is proposed will attract protest.

A healthy democracy smells of feedback. I personally love people complaining about me and telling me Hobartians don’t complain about everything.

My experience is that if something is good and worthwhile it will eventually get up. It may have more boxes to tick than elsewhere but who cares.

I remember reaching the end of our conversation. His reply was memorable. He ignored everything I said and asked me if the bushfires are anywhere near Hobart.

Chapter 236: the centre of Hobart

I find myself in the centre of Hobart, down at the docks, looking for a big, vacant table. Big enough for my family. My wife and I want to show them some photos of our recent trip.
I can’t access a suitable table. We should cap the number of tourists. Limit their number. We can’t cope. We don’t have the infrastructure and I can’t find a table.

It’s depressing watching the lanyarded tourists wander around, with their selfie sticks, not going anywhere, crowding the docks and jamming the road up the mountain. I sure they don’t respect our unique natural environment the way we do.

Eventually we find a seat and look at the photos.
Every photo reminds me of a place, a sight or people.

This guy had seen the bushfires on TV and wanted to know what he could do. I said give money and told him how.  Actually when I said I was from Australia everybody said the same two things.

I can’t understand what you are saying and those bushfires are terrible. Are they close to you?

And this guy had been to Tassie and loved it. He even remembered a place called Bicheno.

Here’s a photo of us riding in what I call a cable car. They don’t but it looks the same. We had a choice. Wander around the docks aimlessly and look at fridge magnets, T-shirts and the mountain or jump in and go up the peak in the cable car. We choose the cable car. 

I said to one guy: It would be really good for the environment if you got rid of this cable car. His reply increased the number of languages I can swear in.

And a photo of this old couple with their grandchildren. We had to take photos of the kids.  As soon as they saw the camera they swarmed around. Like flies at a picnic.

Everybody we meet loved Australia. They had either been and loved it or would love to come.  I always said don’t forget Tasmania. One guy on the other side of the world proved he knew about Tassie. When I said I was from Tassie he said, “Show me your scar.”

I was too stunned to reply.

And this photo of a park ranger who explained how they do things and I told her how we do things. There are definitely differences which we discussed. For instance: their national park was full of people walking their dogs or riding a horse and they have a lottery to decide who gets the privilege of shooting a wild native animal.

Thinking like a Tasmanian I immediately thought we do things better. But their native parks were full of people enjoying themselves. They were not all meditating and communing deeply with nature in a spiritual way but they are all happy and enjoying themselves and I know the future will be different.  In what way I do not know. All I know is learning how to shoot native animals is not something I want to learn.

And here is a photo of our saving angel. We were lost. He knew we needed help and helped us find the best place to get decent coffee. It was probably run by his brother but who cares. Families looking after themselves is good and the coffee was good.

We have now come to the end of our photos.

Gretna is distracted. She has seen some tourists swinging a camera. I don’t know what she says but Gretna never misses an opportunity to get her photo taken. I notice she initially takes their photo and then manages to be in a photo.
She then talks to them for ages. I get the feeling she is showing this retired old man how to behave. Sometimes us old men can learn from primary school females.

Gretna is showing me what to do. Welcome tourists. Thank them for coming. Help them find their way around. Learn from them. Teach them. And treat them the way you want to be treated when roles are reversed.

Chapter 235: Norway : Oslo

Chapter 234: Norway : Oslo :viking museum

Chapter 233: Norway : Oslo :forest walking

Chapter 232: Norway : Oslo

Chapter 231: Norway : Oslo