The Xmas Food Shop – The Climb #668

Monday 21^st December 2020

Today’s big mission was to do the Xmas food shop.

I’m having a small Xmas this year. Family are high risk so we decided way back in the summer to cancel xmas and as a result I’m having a small xmas with my support bubble.

Plans are such that, even with the events of the last few days, it’s not really impacted our plans… except with the borders closing, I can sense panic buying looming.

We got the turkey a few weeks back so it was mainly veg we had to worry about. Sounds simple? Yet it was a nightmare.

The plan was always to do the veg shop today. But anticipating panic buying I pushed us to go early afternoon, worrying that if we left it later then it would be a mob of toilet-paper buying, pasta-hording shoppers. We had a list, we were organised.

I turned up to find shoppers queuing out the front and half way along the parade of shops. Shit, had I left it to late already?

Luckily the queue seemed to move fast, and it appeared that the majority of people were doing their big Xmas shop rather than preparing for whatever Armageddon we were facing this week.

But still it was busy. The lack of social distancing gave C a slight panic attack, and so I had to not only combat shoppers but them wanting to abandon everything and leave. They were going around trying to find free aisles and then remember what we needed, with me following behind, with my list, picking up things they missed.

There was a panic about ham. We wanted a nice gammon joint to go with the turkey, but even after managing to get to through the non-socially-distancing shoppers, they didn’t have any the right size. Partly to stop C panicking, and partly because my parents had sent a £20 Morrisons gift card to go towards Xmas dinner, I picked up a large ham (although by no means the largest) and said, “we’re having this.”

We are going to be eating cold meats for a week after Xmas!

But we got it done and got it home, and now all we need to worry about is the alcohol and the soft drinks. That’s tomorrow’s plan. I also need to do some wrapping as, even though I haven’t bought C a lot of gifts, there seems to be an abundance of wrapping and I’ve no idea where my scissors are.

For a small Xmas this feels like a lot of work. On the plus side, at least I’m feeling more Christmasy than I did at the end of last week. But it does feel like a full time job for what in essence is a quiet xmas with a meal.