A few weeks ago, quite early in the morning in relative terms, it was quite cool. It wasn't chilly, but it was cool enough for one to reach for one's long pants for a time. While one of us was snug and smug in her fluffy new birthday dressing gown the other stood staring into his empty wardrobe as it slowly dawned that with two exceptions every item of clothing that he owned that even remotely covered his knees was neatly if inconveniently zipped away in a bag, on the boat, in Belgium.
With all hope of flying north for the winter abandoned this year, the prospect of enduring a winter with temperatures below twenty degrees while clad only in board shorts is not one to relish. Naturally heading off to a department store was out of the question too. However he is fairly well versed in the ways of the world, and quickly found a pair of jeans of exactly the right size online, at a bargain price with free shipping. They arrived today, no fuss, no dramas, problem solved, happy days, roll on winter.
The other of us on the other hand is a borderline technophobe, but none the less bravely sat at a screen, assembling our first ever grocery order "on the line" as she once described it. The ordering part went very smoothly as one would expect from a system that has been simplified to the point where all one needs to do is to click on a photo icon of the item one desires apparently. Job done, we settled back to wait for our next three weeks worth of groceries to arrive on our doorstop.
This they mostly they did, also today as it happens.
There were a couple of substitutions, and one or two things were out of stock (still) but it was the single tomato that adorned our bench that is already etched in our memory of good times had by all. Were she the Ancient Mariner this would be the albatross hanging around her neck. It appears that during the ordering process the tomato icon was clicked, but the boxes marked "number" and "kilograms" beside it were not. As we now know, artificial intelligence has not yet progressed to the mind reading stage, with the result that a single lonely tomato arrived gift wrapped in green plastic.
We've never really liked Bruschetta anyway.
1 comment
I think I am going to give online ordering a go.
Post a Comment