Stay-at-home order might not be fully observed

And he's baaaaaaaack.

I have every intention of being more assiduous in my blipping but I am blipping busy and I'll be blipped if I am spending more blippng time on the blipping computer until I have to. Tonight, however, the choice was clear. Clean the kitchen or catch up on a blip or two. So... 

Highlight of any day is a chance to leave the house. Mrs. Ottawacker and I have been perhaps the most anally retentive people in Canada about going out; for the past 15 months, it has been basically home imprisonment but without the ankle bracelet. But today, Mrs. Ottawacker entrusted me with going to the supermarket to pick up the order she had placed online. "Not even you can mess this up," she smiled at me, in a way I like to think was lovingly.

She was wrong. As she was putting away the boxes of food, and I was trailing them in for the car, I heard a rather shrill Victor Meldrew-style "I don't believe it." (One Foot In The Grave would work so much better, by the way, if Richard Wilson's character didn't have all the character flaws.) As is my wont, I rushed in to ask what was the matter. It wasn't the answer I was expecting.

"I send you out to do a simple task: go to the supermarket and wait in the car park while somebody comes, asks you to confirm your name, and then puts the order in the trunk of the car," she said. "You then drive home, bring the boxes in from the car, and give them to me."

"Yes," I said. "And?"

"You've go the wrong bloody order," she said. "Didn't the person who brought the order out ask you your name?"

"Well, yes," I said. "But it wasn't my name, obviously, because you made the order and I had to pick it up for you."

"Okay," she said patiently, with only the slightest narrowing of the nostrils, a sign that something big is going to happen. "My name. Did the person ask whether this order was for me?"

I thought back desperately to the conversation I held with the spotty 17 year old who had brought out the order to the car on the trolley. It went something like "Mmkjff umff ihmfff? Mawaffump fffrulllifrump innit." - to which I had answered "yes, but it might rain tomorrow" because I hate asking people to repeat themselves through two masks and a semi-closed car window.

"He clearly said your name," I lied. "What is missing?"

"Don't worry," she said. "I'll sort it out. Did he give you the receipt?"

"Erm," I said.... and left the room.