Why I Hate Tesco

It starts when I turn off the main road and see the store, the store that our local planning authority should never have given permission for; we were sold a pup. The site deserved a better quality build, real stone and a proper roof, not a flat pack shed. It is in a picturesque location and adjacent to an important site of industrial archeology, it was a cop out.

Why have they sited the recycling area in the most congested part of the car park? on a bend and next to the entrance to the filling station, there are no parking spaces nearby, so everyone parks on the road, gridlock.

In store the yogurts are so tightly packed in to the shelves, I cant get any out even the assistant can’t get at them and he concedes it maybe wasn’t such a good idea to stack them like that.

In the fruit and veg’ aisle I am elbowed out of the way by an assistant who is more intent on waving his little bar code gun thingy, over the coleslaw and beetroot than letting a customer reach for a product, sod it I won’t bother, shame I like beetroot.

I abandon ship, I’m out of here, ‘fridge food’ and fruit replenished the rest can wait till another day.

My jaw muscles start to relax, and my shoulders stand at ease, at the prospect of getting out of here, the checkout is going tickety boo, and the young guy on the till is nice enough, till its time to pay, and if its one thing that really gets me going; it’s when the next customer behind you is so ‘in your space’ you cant get back from loading your trolley, to the credit card machine to pay.

I am not in the mood; ‘EXCUSE ME SIR, I would like to get to the machine to pay for my shopping’ I expected him to step back, but no he steps around; me I am now sandwiched between the man, and his wife who is pushing the trolley against my hip.

The young guy on the till, pulls his head down into his shoulders, like a turtle retreating into its shell, he fears a scene, and braces for impact. I bite my lip, just, and glare at the offending shopping trolley, grudgingly the wife moves the trolley back and I can at last stand square on at the machine, all I have to do now is remember my PIN number………

My foul mood travels home with me (I warned you that trying to be all things to all people was not a good idea) retelling my tail of woe to Mr Uhdd he helpfully suggests that maybe I should have gone to Morrisons’ instead, he looks at the expression on my face, declares I ‘look scary’ and retreats ‘to sort the laundry’

Rant over I feel better now!

There are many more reasons why I hate Tesco stores, but this is enough for today.

Technorati Tags: Tesco, Shopping, Food

Playing Chicken

You are never alone with a chicken,

 

By popular request a little more about our chucks, we have, in all the time we have lived here kept chickens.

When we moved in there was one already installed in the barn, it must have been left behind by the out going owners (a messy divorce, there wasn’t much going on in the communication department, between the two parties) we were offered their two goats and a flock of geese,as part of the house deal, but we declined, (there may well still be, an ongoing a goat, geese custody/maintenance battle, being played out in a court somewhere for all we know)  thinking we had enough work on our hands in buying the house, looking after livestock, wasn’t on our agenda.

A couple of days after we moved in, my Dad found a hen sat in a a seed tray, on a ledge in a dark corner of the barn teetering precariously,  on top of a large pile off eggs, she had made this secluded corner her home, undiscovered  by the fox, she just kept laying an egg each day, and foraged for food in the garden and field. We carefully removed the pile of eggs, some were very old! and the next day she laid us our first free range fresh egg, the rest is history, we were now keepers of chucks.

We usually keep about six at any one time, they are free range (and that includes the kitchen if they get chance) just very occasionally we forget to shut the hen house up at night and a fox will kill some or all of them (foxes must check the hen house each night) this is a bad hen keeping moment, you feel you have let them down, but we try and salve our consciences by reasoning that a good, short life is better than being a battery hen. 

We are most definitely softie hen keepers, rarely  have any had to be dispatched, and that is usually on welfare grounds, if they become sick; all you want to know about killing a chicken can be found here on Stoneheads blog although there are some alternatives available, as Hedgewizard explained to Stonehead

‘Thanks Stoney, really appreciated. I think I’ll invest in one of those hand dispatchers, as I really didn’t fancy risking buggering things up doing it by hand. I did have a friend who used to kill his with a golf club, and impressively painless it was too. The only bit I didn’t like was having to retrieve the head from the garden over the road before the owners found it…’

 

But back to our ‘girls’, our two warrens, ‘thing one’ and ‘thing two’ (and the ring leaders) are old now,

 

about three years old, they have been laying until very recently, but not each day and the shells are thin. Recent additions are to are flock are two Daisybelles, which are very pretty, (the photo at the top of the post) and the two white ‘leghorns’  they have a  delightful ‘comb overs’

So introductions over, I tell you more about them another day, they have many adventures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Chickens, Warrens, Daisybelles, White Leghorns, Eggs, Poultry