Trolley 97

Trolley 97 from Sainbury's, without a front wheel security device, captured by the footbridge over the railway at the bottom of West Street, Ewell.

A capture which dissipated some of the irritation generated by being eased into buying the wrong paper for my printer at 'Office Outlet', the new version of what used to be Staples, noticed at reference 1.

They used to sell paper which came in a shiny, deep blue wrapper and which I have been using for years, with little trouble beyond a tendency for my printer to suck in more than one page at once. But that, it turns out was a Staples product, no longer sold by Office Outlet.

The search for a new brand started off with being irritated by the huge amount of choice, which struck me as being almost as wasteful as the huge amount of choice in the matter of bottled water. With the difference that this choice did matter: some printers like some papers better than others. So I settled for a packet of HP paper, made from organically grown sustainable eucalyptus forest - not having known that HP were into paper at all. To be told at the till - by a chap who has sold me paper from time to time for some years now - that this was all wrong and what I wanted was Brand X, something called 90g paper, the same as I had had before. A Brand X which cost £7.99 against the £4.99 that the usually expensive HP wanted for theirs. A Brand X which turns out to be a lot shinier and stiffer than the stuff I had before, which turns out to be 80g paper, despite what the chap had told me. All rather irritating, and there is, I think, a fair chance that my very cheap printer will not like this very dear paper. Perhaps I shall switch my custom, such as it is, to Rymans.

Somewhat mollified on arrival at home to find that BH had managed to buy me the same toothbrush as she had bought me last time around, probably a year or two ago.

I associate to my father, who did not spend a lot of times shopping for his clothes, but when he did he went for good stuff. And to keep the time wasted to a minimum, he would just tell the shop man to give him another one of whatever it was that he was wearing and wanted to replace. In those days this seemed to work. None of this 'O sir, you must have bought that several years ago' nonsense.

See references 2 and 3 for a French take on this very point.

PS: in fairness to Office Outlet, I should say that the new 'Genie' shredder is doing fine and has only jammed once in the couple of months that we have had it.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/shopping.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hamell+houellebecq.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=jed+martin.