Diary

Fairly quiet day today. I decided not to go to Tesco early. I knew they were allowing NHS staff in early but as Sue was working I couldn’t get in early. I’m glad I didn’t as I have seen a video of the queue which stretched easily 500 metres up to the nearby community centre. You’re not telling me all those were NHS staff! They’re supposed to be short staffed.

At least Sue had PPE although I’m not sure it’s very comfortable to have to wear it for 12 hours.

I took the dogs for a walk before going shopping. I chose a route that allowed plenty of space for the ol’ social distancing. Not that it made much difference. People just don’t get it. We were going up a small road in a housing estate. Its quite narrow. There was a woman with a small kid on the opposite side of the road. She crossed the road towards where we were. I crossed over to where she had come from and just muttered , “seriously?”. She gave be a dirty look.

People tend to be drawn to dogs. Probably more so if they have a dog with them. To be fair the few dog owners we came across kept their distance. The various old gits however all made a bee line for us. It was a bit like something from the Walking Dead. “Aww can we stroke them?”. My mutterings towards them were more along the lines of “You’re all gonna die”.

I left the dogs at home and set off to Tesco. I didn’t need much. The store didn’t seem to be improving. The people who had been in early were still going through the checkouts. I said a couple of days ago that food retail are slow to react. An example of that is dried pasta. When the panic buying started one of the top lines being hoarded was pasta. It lasts a long time in your cupboard. The pasta shelves don’t seem to have been filled since the initial panic buying. If they filled up those types of items they wouldn’t get wiped out as quickly as before. All the idiots who were panic buying already have a cupboard full. Apparently people have entire rooms set aside for their stockpiled food. Morons.

I have been going through my video folder for old vids that didn’t make it to Youtube. I might have enough clips for another out takes video!

   

We went shopping yesterday evening. It wasn’t a surprise that a lot of the shelves were empty. I had 20 years in food retail management and at times even planning Christmas could be challenging and that happens at the same time every year. Despite all the planning that goes in the festive period some stores can easily get it very wrong.

No one has experienced anything like the Corona Virus so to expect stores to operate anything like normal isn’t realistic. I went into our local Tesco at 8 am this morning. No milk. No bread. Not a single loaf. No eggs. No toilet rolls (obviously). The stores have abandoned 24 hour shopping so that their night teams can fill the stores up but having seen the store yesterday evening and seeing it early (ish) this morning there is something going very wrong. The greater demand for goods will have added a huge strain on the distribution teams and they don’t seem to be reacting well. Of course they are probably losing a lot of staff to the virus or self isolating but the food retain system has always been slow to react. On the way home I went into the local convenience store which is almost next door to Tesco. They had milk although only full fat. No bread but they had toilet rolls. I know where I’ll be going first in future.

Until a couple of days ago I was promoting the Tennis Trading Guide. The feedback that I was getting was that people were interested in having something to read and study but as this situation is clearly going on for a lot longer than initially expected and the tennis season was extended further yesterday it just doesn’t feel appropriate to continue to promote it.

The trading guide is still available if anyone does want something to study and I am more than happy to respond to any email queries. Its not like I have much to do right now!

My heel problem is improving. I think with total rest if would have recovered fully by now but the dogs still need exercising. Walking any distance is still quite painful and I strained a muscle in my leg by trying to protect my heel and not walking normally! Happy days.