I notice that Tescos have announced £2.6b annual profit this morning. That is a lot of profit and they still sell fruit and vegetables that if it hasn't gone off before you manage to get it through the understaffed tills they will have done before you have had them a couple of days. It is only a matter of time until they rule the world or at least the UK and there will be no need for any other shop at all.


So in an attempt to ruin their profit forecasts for next year Christine and I have established a different shopping routine. We buy locally produced products from locally run shops. We buy fruit and vegetables from the Saturday Market in Beverley which lasts from one week to the next with no waste, we buy fish from Pecks fish shop and meat from the Springdale Farm Shop in Crofts Garden Centre along with our bread and definitely the best meat pies and gravy any where in the world. Those are for me of course Christine has the grilled fish.


The down side of this is of course that it takes a long time so that shopping in this manner can only be for those people with sufficient spare time, namely pensioners like us although naturally Christine would point out that you aren’t a pensioner at 51.


So we normally start off in Beverley Market getting the fruit and veg and then it’s time for coffee, usually Nero’s, nice coffee, nice apricot croissant. I would naturally prefer a bacon sandwich from the market caravan with a plastic coffee sat at one of their garden tables but Christine of course doesn’t do caravan food so it’s Nero’s.


So there we were last Saturday having our coffee and I’m grumbling because Christine who said she didn’t want a croissant is now trying to help herself to a piece of mine and it just happens to be the piece with most of the apricot on when in walks Pam and Keith a couple of friends from up the village. The ones we went to the Village Hall Theatre with last week. They pull up a couple of chairs and Keith goes off to get their coffees, two coffees and a biscuit thing that is promptly broke in half and they have half each, they are sharing a scone.


I don’t get this sharing thing. Christine wants half my croissant, Pam and Keith are sharing a scone, I look around and no one else is sharing their food, everyone has their own plate in front of them with their own food on it. It has to be a pensioner thing and I wonder at what age the change comes from full scone to half a scone. I just look down to check if Pam or Keith still have their slippers but no, even though they are older than us, much older of course than Christine’s 51, they don’t seem to have slipped into full Togdom just yet.


Then it’s onto Crofts for some meat and a perhaps a couple of Box Hedge plants to fill a gap in the garden. And this is where the problem starts, I know I said we had plenty of time but........!


On the table in the garden centre there must be about fifty Box plants in rows, five deep by ten across and we want two plants, so we pick up two from the front row and off we go! No we don’t, we pick up the third from the left on the fourth row and the second from the right on the second row but aren’t sure about these two so we pick up another two to compare and then another two. They are all the same! The next two get selected and two more and eventually we finish up with two off the front row. They are all the same! And when she has finished none of the plants go back in the holes they came out of and it looks like a vandal with an ASBO has attacked the table. But we have two plants and we aren’t rushed for time so it’s now off to the meat counter.


I have by this time wondered off to the coffee shop to get a coffee and to see if I can fit in a full scone before Christine finds me. I think I preferred it when Christine did all the shopping at Tesco’s while I sat in the Garden Room and watched the world go by.