Christmas shopping

It snowed again whilst I was out Christmas shopping yesterday, when I arrived in town it was coming down quickly and settling and I was worried that I would have to leave to get home safely but it didn’t come to anything and as I left town there was just a light sparking in the corners that we left undisturbed, which could just as likely been the remains of a hard frost as snow.

I’m pleased with my Christmas shopping this year; most of it has been bought online but not from big store websites. Some have been from Folksy and others from individual websites of the people who make the items. And of course there where the presents the came from the LETS market.

What I haven’t bought from these places I have tried to get locally, even if it has just been the local supermarket. Yesterday I went to Gloucester for two presents these were both things that I couldn’t find local, or didn’t have a clue what to buy the person so needed ‘browsing’ time for ideas. I have one more present on my list and then have home-made hampers to help put together for Rhys’s family.

It would have been lovely to have made more of the presents this year, but time is never on my side and I dislike starting to think about Christmas to early as having to long a build up makes the day feel almost like a let down when it finally arrives. 

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A big change around here in the last few weeks is the Rhys has a job, he is working shifts so isn’t always off on the same days as me. He also starts work earlier than me so even on the days that I haven’t been working I have been awake earlier than normal but I am enjoying it.

For the last few mornings I have got up and spent leisurely time surfing the internet, reading blogs and discovering new ones, catching up with friends I haven’t had time to stay in contact with via email and researching this that are important to me that I never seem to have time to spend reading about.

For example, since I first watched A Farm for the Future I have wanted to find out much more about grass, a subject I doubt many people even think about let alone want to find out more about which means that the information I am looking for is buried and hidden away but I have finally started to learn more.

There are ten thousand species of grass, it makes up 25% of all plants on the planet. Rice is a type of grass, which started being cultivated for food by humans ten thousand years again, with over half of the world’s population now relying on it as a food staple. Wheat, another kind, underpinned the development of Western civilization and now covers more of the land than any other kind of plant

 This morning on the way back from dropping him of I called by at the allotment to see what was happening up there, very luckily as it would turn out as one of the nets had come off the kale and the rabbits had eaten half of it, stems and all, right down to the ground. I pulled the net that was on them back over and then added an extra one, which I had to unfreeze from its spot on the ground, for extra protection.

Credit Crunch

This morning on breakfast news there was an interview with a woman, it was something to do with the Labour conference, and she was talking about the credit crunch and how it was effecting her and her family, prices for things have been going up, interest rates are rising and how bad it was, etc., all reasonable points but her main point seemed to be that she was now having to think more carefully about her food shopping, where she is going to do her shopping and only buying the basics, which is surely a good thing?

I think it’s a good thing, if people are ‘only buying the basics’ then they won’t be wasting so much and they will be thinking about what they are eating more, it might even start a few more people thinking more seriously about where they’re food comes from and why it costs what it costs. If you are thinking more about what you’re buying then hopefully people will be cooking more, or at least thinking about what they are cooking.

I know the credit crunch isn’t a good thing, and some people are finding it hard but I really can’t understand why having to think about your food shopping is a bad thing. When she was asked by the presenter if she’d had to make cuts backs she said yes, they had. When she was pressed on this she said they no longer eat out or buy take-a-ways as often as they use to. Also not something that I think of as a ‘bad thing.’

Each year the number of people, mostly older people, who die from lack of heating increases. That is a bad thing, that is a terrible thing, and that is only going to increase with fuel costs rising. Surely that should be the main focus for how the credit crunch is effecting people, not whether or not people can afford take-a-way for dinner.

Food prices are a concern, and they are affecting many people, but I can’t help taking it all with a pinch of salt. There was no way food prices could stay as artificially low has they were/ still are, if it costs more to produce something than you can sell it for then that product is either going to be discontinued or, when it is something that is needed, the price will have to rise, surely that is just common sense.

The Silly Things I Do

Somehow, buying rice crispy cakes doesn’t fit into my idea of ‘the simple life’, these ones didn’t even have chocolate in and you could taste it.

Homemade ones are fine, but bought ones just shouldn’t fit into the picture. Hopefully blogging about it will mean next time I’m not so temped. I really need to get better at making sure there are things at home that can be taken into work as lunches.

New shoes and days off

I bought some new shoes today, normally all my shoes are give aways, from carboots or charity shops, but there are road works on the way into Gloucester so I didn’t want to spend the day sat in traffic so I went into Ross-on-Wye instead.

 

I aso got a phone call letting me know that the event I was meant to be working at tomorrow has been cancelled so I get the day off!

In the news

A Thai journalist being sued by Tesco. 

I’m not a big fan of super markets and at the moment Tescos is trying to build ‘mega-store’ in one of my local towns, there are two arguments, Tesco’s will bring much need employment to the area vs Tesco’s will kill of the small, ex-mining town centre. Seeing as I have no desirer to work for Tesco’s, I’m in support of the latter, the town alread has two supermarkets (a co-op and a Lidl) and if people really want to shop at Tesco’s they could take the free bus that Tescos provide.

Health and safety experts are investigating the death of a woman who died after being trampled by a herd of stampeding cattle in Suffolk.

Stories like this always make me worry that there’s going to be an up-rising against farm animals, and there have been two stories involving cow recently, I know the people involved have been hurt (or in this case worse) but I always find myself thinking “what were they doing?…” possibly wrong of me.

Measures designed to curb the power of major supermarkets and improve choice for consumers have been announced by the Competition Commission.

I’m in two minds about the really price of food, I do think that supermarkets should be paying producers the true cost of what it costs to produce food, but I’m not completely sure we’d (the family) be able to afford to eat if it wasn’t for supermarket own brands