"Helter Skelter" - Beatles, 1968

I feel like a grown-up tonight. For only the second time since getting my British "driving licence" (for my US friends, note the wording and spelling) last September, I drove myself in the dark to the supermarket for groceries! Last week, it was to the Tesco in Banbury. Tonight, my target was the closer Banbury Sainsbury's. But this week was even more of a challenge, as I did a full throughout-the-store grocery shop. Why was that such a challenge? Because of the helter skelter way that Britons drive their "trollies" in the supermarket! It's absolute madness! I've spent my 2+ years here trying to figure out the system. Is it left-side-of-the-aisle or right-side-of-the-aisle? I've determined it's neither. There is no system...just madness. I only bumped into two other people's carts this trip (although I must admit I also almost ran over a woman carrying a plastic shopping basket full of fruit), so I consider it a success.

And once I managed the lack of traffic patterns in the aisles, I had to face the frightening self-packing of the grocery bags moment! It's not that I'm lazy or think I'm too good to pack up my own purchases. It's just that I have spent my entire life having it done for me in the US and therefore just don't have the proper skills! My American family & friends (at least those of us of a certain age) will remember a very famous episode of one of Lucille Ball's comedy shows in which Lucy and Ethel are working on an assembly line and can't keep up with the speed of the items coming down the belt. That's me in a UK supermarket. So I usually will only go with John if I'm buying more than a few items. He's really good at packing up grocery purchases. He even tries to do it at Randall's in Houston, much to the dismay of the high-schoolers for whom it is their source of after-school income!

So after work today, I faced a lot of my fears -- and now it's time for a nice glass of wine and tonight's trials and tribulations of "EastEnders"! I'm rather proud of myself!

Janet