Category Archives: Fridays Shopping

shopping on Fridays and my thoughts

Cookers, Curtain Hooks and Changes in the Market

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I’ve been living off cold meals all week because of my cooker breaking down and my failure to buy a new one last week and it’s getting pretty boring. The television that I bought instead of a cooker is still sitting on the sofa because I can’t make my mind up whether to take the new one upstairs and have a bigger TV to watch in bed or take the old one upstairs and buy a Freeview box  for it or get Virgin digital upstairs as well as downstairs. I think that it will be the former because the new TV is much lighter and easier to get upstairs.

This week I needed to buy some new curtain hooks first before looking for a cooker again. My cat Sparky had jumped onto my bedroom window and got caught up in the curtain. The plastic curtain hooks  broke in half and the curtain came down on top of her, giving her enough of a fright to go and hide behind the vacuum that she normally runs away from. I had to put up with daylight too early in my bedroom for a couple of days until I could get into town.

We went to the market my mum and I. We meet every Friday for lunch and have done for over 20 years. This week we went to one of the several cafes on the outskirts of the market and after some excellent sandwiches we went looking for curtain hooks on a stall that hasn’t changed since the market opened nearly 40 years ago. Lots of plastic containers full of buttons, fancy pins, press studs, hooks and eyes, plastic eyes for stuffed toys, needles, bobbins of cotton, a variety of different types of cloth and anything else that you can imagine you would need for sewing.

I said that the stall hadn’t changed but there was a massive difference. For many years it was owned and run by 2 elderly sisters, but today a young gay Asian man served me. At first I just thought that he was from one of the clothes stalls and looking after the stall as a favour while the stallholder nipped out. I asked for curtain hooks and he asked which type of curtains they were for, reeling off the different types quicker than I could think. He obviously belonged on that stall and it was a real pleasure being served by him, in fact more of a pleasure than the previous owners! I got metal curtain hooks so that should stop the cat from bringing it down again, just hope it isn’t the wooden curtain pole on her head next time.

I then went looking for a cooker at the Co-op and found what I was looking for straight away, though it costs quite a lot more than the same model on Amazon. A ceramic hob  again but instead of a double oven with combined grill I chose one with a grill and an oven. Every time that I’ve had a combined grill/oven the grill has broken down just after the guarantee has run out. I figure that with them separate neither will get used as much so I might have more of a chance of making the grill last longer. I also made sure that the on/off buttons were straightforward, I’m getting really fed up with complicated appliances that I need to read instructions for every time that I use them.

I’m really looking forward to cheese on toast again and I’ve just realised that I won’t have to give my old cooker the clean it was due because it’s getting taken away ha ha.

 

A New HD Television – But You Can’t Cook On It!

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I passed my first year of stopping smoking last month and as my bank account was growing nicely I decided to treat myself to some new electrical items. I had a bit of a list for different reasons.

Alarm Clock

My old digital one still works but I am fed up with it. If I just happen to press the wrong button by mistake when I’m setting it the alarm could go off 2 days late or at 5.00 pm instead of 5.00 am. I can’t figure out how to get it back to the right mode without the instructions which I seem to have lost. I decided that this alarm clock  is too clever for it’s own good and that I wanted a simple, straightforward one.

Microwave

I’ve been thinking that I need to replace my current microwave  for a while because some of the lining has scratched off in the bottom and things don’t seem to cook as evenly as they did. I get the feeling that it’s going to break down sooner or later and as it was only a cheap model I’ve had my money’s worth out of it.

Oven

I haven’t done well with ovens in recent years. My first one was a gas cooker  with eye level grill and that did well. I replaced it with a cooker with a ceramic hob when I got a new kitchen. That got damaged when I had a small kitchen fire and the oven that I got with the insurance payout wasn’t as good. The oven/grill part and 2 of the rings went after about 3 years and the one that I replaced it with has the same problems a few years on.

I also can’t use the fan oven  because you have to set the timer to use it and I’ve never been able to figure that out and there is nothing in the instruction manual to show you. That sounds as if I’m thick but there are just several buttons with different symbols and it’s not clear what any of them are. It’s another of those products that is too clever for it’s own good.

DVD Recorder

My old DVD recorder  broke a while back and I haven’t replaced it because I’m on Virgin cable which has catch up TV. It doesn’t catch up on films though and I never seem to be able to watch good films when they are on.

There isn’t much choice of shops that sell electrical appliances in the town, most of them moved out to industrial estates and as I haven’t got a car it’s either limited town shopping or the Internet. The first shop that I went into had a reasonable amount of choices for all of the items that I was looking for.

The manager or owner apologised as I went in because he was short of staff that day. There looked to be a few assistants around but all were busy with customers. That was ok by me because I like to have a good look at the items that I’m interested in and make my decisions based on features and price – often spending a bit more than I originally intend for extra features.

I was astonished to find that there wasn’t one single price label on any of the hundreds of products displayed there. I felt annoyed because I like to decide for myself and not be persuaded into anything by a sales advisor. With no prices it meant that I would have to wait for help and then wait for them to price up an awful lot of items. Then I would feel uncomfortable taking their time up to make decisions if there were other customers waiting for assistance. Then I might buy something just to get out of there or leave without buying anything.

I decided to leave without any assistance and as I passed the manager on the way to the door he said there would be somebody to help me soon. When I said that there were no prices he told me that they had just had a move around and hadn’t had time to label anything. He asked me what I was looking for and when I reeled off the list he looked sick when I told him that I didn’t have time to hang around.

I felt sorry for him but I’ve been through refits at the shop where I work and you make sure that the shop is ready for customers before it opens and that includes price labels. If products had just been moved around then you move the labels too – if there were any in the first place! I couldn’t help thinking that he wouldn’t have to employ as many staff if everything was priced up.

Anyway I checked out cookers and microwaves in another shp but decided to check out” the Internet before making a final decision. I did find a nice simple radio alarm clock  that I could set without using an instruction manual and when I was about to buy I indicated a special offer and said “I’ll have that television as well”. It’s an HD flat screen with built in Freeview and a DVD player.

My old TV is about ten years old and still going strong so really the new HD TV  isn’t exactly needed but I decided to put the old one upstairs so I can watch TV in bed on a bigger screen than my portable and use it for my Wii Fit . When I was setting my new television up I realised that I would have to dine off cold sandwiches yet again because I still hadn’t got a working cooker.

PS

My new television is now sitting on the sofa because when I’d got it set up – which was easy – I couldn’t remember how to set up Virgin digital on it and couldn’t find the instruction book. I’m tempted to put the new TV upstairs because it’s lighter to carry, has Freeview anyway and my cat won’t lose a perch downstairs because this new TV is too narrow for her to sit on.