Spare a thought...

....for the poor shopping trolleys, abandoned in the wilds of Birchwood, having to huddle together for warmth and shelter. Every person that walks past them either ignores them, or puts rubbish in them.

This huddle is not alone - there are a number of them scattered around the area. In fact this particular group look remarkably well - all of them are at least facing the correct way up.

To make matters worse, it seems likely that they could become redundant in the very short term, given that the supermarket that supposedly cares for them has today run out of bread, Heinz baked beans and tomato soup, chicken, minced beef and a variety of other goods. With no shopping to be transported what will these poor trolleys do? Will anybody ever come to rescue them from the sub-zero temperatures and take them back home?

Yes blippers, the snow and the cold have finally tipped me over the edge into complete and utter insanity.

The other few from today are here

James ABSOLUTELY HAD TO go into town today, to buy a game for the Xbox with his Christmas money. We went on the train, which was warm and on time, so it wasn't too bad!

Then later on, around 4.30 James dragged me out to meet up with one of his friends at the local shop to bring him back to our house. What James hadn't done of course was confirmed, for definite, with his friend that he was indeed allowed to come out. So after 10 minute walk and standing in the cold outside the chippy, local temp was -6 at the time, with the smell of fresh chippy chips driving me nuts not enough money to buy a bag of chips to keep me warm, James let this little snippet of information slip. Did I shout? No but only because my jaw had frozen shut at that point. In fact, I was remarkably restrained and we walked back hand in hand and had a chat about the best way to organise and confirm our social calendar. I also made it clear that I would not be leaving the house again this weekend in sub-zero temperatures unless it was to go play in the snow and I was suitably dressed for our current ice age.

Saw a man jogging this afternoon - in his shorts running around on local pavements and roads that are covered in a mix of 2 inch think uneven ice, slush and 4 inch thick powder snow. I'm wondering if it is a new extreme sport - "Extreme jogging" - only for the insanely stupid? Me, I would much rather be indoors with a nice cup of chocolate horlicks, my ski socks, leg warmers, hot water bottle and blanket.

Oh yeah - Asda had run out of chocolate horlicks in jars too - had to buy a load of sachets of the stuff instead. The thing I found funniest of all was that because there was no bread, clearly everybody thought "we'll make our own" so when I was looking for chocolate sprinkles to go on top of our ice cream (seriously), I noticed that there was no yeast, strong white flour, plain flour or anything else that could feasibly used to make bread with!!!! Birchwood might smell lovely tomorrow with the aroma of fresh baked bread coming from everyone's houses.

The girl at the checkout said that this afternoon had been worse than any of the days running up to Christmas. Fortunately I had gone around 5.30, although it was surprisingly quiet - it would appear everyone went out to panic buy during daylight hours - muggins here went to do a normal shop and found many of our staple items not there. Its OK though - we have crisps, chocolate, cheese, pasta, booze and fags...we'll be fine. (I hadn't really paid attention to the news or the wether reports since Thursday night and didn't realise that impending snow based armageddon was approaching).

And Corin has picked up a snowboard ...so we're going to go to the park tomorrow and use it as a 3 man sledge!!!!