Today is another dull and uninspiring day and we lingered at home until lunch was disposed of. Then we went forth, partly for exercise and partly to buy a few needed items of shopping.

A dull and uninspiring day

But first, as usual, we paid our ritual visit to Jusaka for coffee. That was our first visit. I’ll come to the second in a minute.

Cat in the window

Walking along the High Street, dodging as best we could the crowds of people who seem never to have heard of social distancing, we spotted this window display. “So what?” I hear you say but as car lovers (“cats” including everything from domestic moggies up to tigers), we found ourselves amused by this representation of an arched-back cat.

As an aside, it seems that the shops are already preparing for Christmas and their displays reflect this.

Chapel Market

We turned into Chapel Market and found it quite busy with a good turnout of stalls. The market undergoes busy days and less busy days without me ever managing to work out what the pattern is or whether there even is one.

Iceland

Our destination was not the market itself but Iceland. The supermarket, that is, not the country, though that too is a very interesting and picturesque place to visit as I found out some years ago. (That was pre-blog so I never wrote about it. It was an episode in my previous life.)

What did we see in Iceland?

Mince pies
Photo by Tigger

We saw that Iceland too is already beginning to prepare for Christmas. There were mince pies (above) and…

Christmas cakes

…and Christmas cakes. By the way, does anyone actually like mince pies? My mother used to make dozens and dozens of them at Christmas and I was forced to eat the wretched things. I hated them then and still can’t face them.

Something that is odd about this rush to Christmas is that we have not yet reached Hallowe’en and the shops are also stocking the usual junk for that festivity also.

Orange fez
Photo by Tigger

In our way back to Jusaka, we spotted this man wearing an enormous orange fez. Tigger managed to snapshot him between passing buses. Why the fez? No idea; maybe he’s a fan of Tommy Cooper.

So why were we going back to Jusaka? Because we suddenly realised that we hadn’t paid for our coffee. We sometimes pay when ordering but other times, if they are busy, they wave us to a seat and bring the coffee when they can deal with us. (They know what we want and the order is always the same.) In that case, we pay on the way out. That scenario was repeated today except that we forgot to pay and so went back to rectify the fault.

That short outing was all we managed today. Let’s see what tomorrow brings…