*Please see Part 1 for the definition of quirky.
Shops charge for bags. Bring your own and hope you don’t buy more stuff than the bags you brought can hold. You’ve probably walked to the shop anyway so you can’t carry that much home. You ‘go to the shop’ and you ‘do your shop’ or if you just need a couple of random things you go for ‘bits and bobs’ and if you drive to the shop is because you are doing a big shop.
There’s a shop chain named Iceland. They sell mostly refrigerated and frozen items. It only took me a couple of minutes inside to get it.
And then there’s the trolleys (shopping carts). They are all locked together and you have to put a one Pound coin in the slot to release your trolley from the chain. When you click it back into the chain after your shopping your coin is released. Trolleys are not left randomly about in the car park (parking lot). Some charity shops (thrift stores) sell fancy coins the same size and shape for a couple of Pounds that you can carry on your key ring so support a good charity and not have to dig for a one Pound coin when getting your trolley.
Can we talk about the coins. Like keys there are sooooo many of them. 1 Pound (two toned), 2 Pound, 1 Pence, 2 Pence (quite large), Five Pence (so tiny), Ten Pence, Twenty Pence, Fifty Pence. And if you dump all your coins into your hand and look confused enough, the kind woman working the till (cash register) will pick out what you need. Pay attention to your “loose change”, it is more than you think. And the bills – Five, Ten, Twenty, Hundred Pound notes – are all different sizes. And although you may have more than one Pound, you never have Pounds. You have one Pound, five Pound, twenty Pound. And if something costs between say three and four Pound, it would cost ‘three Pound fifty’ (no need to add ‘pence’).
I find groceries and other essentials are relatively less expensive here. For taxable items the tax is already in the posted price. It’s almost as if the companies who sell stuff price things to support the affordability of the product by the people buying them rather than pricing things to be a status indicator or for profits only. But maybe I haven’t been here long enough yet to form that opinion. Maybe I have.
The backup noise that big trucks make sounds like a goose with a sore throat. Except for the rubbish collection trucks which talk to you “stand well clear, truck backing up.”
Speaking of rubbish collection trucks, there are 5 – FIVE – rubbish bins issued per house: garden waste, recycling, outside food waste bin, inside food waste bin that you empty into the outside food waste bin, and general rubbish. There is one pick up day per week and a different combination of bins goes out each week. They publish a schedule. Pay attention.
Every single thing you buy has recycling instructions on it. This is important when deciding which bin to put something in, and for the environment.
Keep lovin’ louder than the hate, Y’all and stay tuned for more to come …
