Praising Solitary Shopping

 

I try to shop as quickly as possible to minimise my exposure  to infected droplets emitted by other shoppers. Serious obstacles are groups of people blocking aisles. I can usually navigate my way past solitary shoppers quite easily. The great problems are the blockades constructed by people shopping in pairs.

Couples tend to have prolonged seminars about the tensile strength of the cucumbers. Sometimes they block not only the shelf containing whatever it is they contemplate buying, but several other shelves too. There will be their trolley, with one of them behind the trolley, often with a bottom sticking out behind them, and the other in front of the trolley waving about a sample of whatever it is they might eventually decide to buy. Sometimes one of the pair minds the trolley on one side of the aisle, while the other inspects the opposite side, contorting themselves so that there is too little space for anyone to pass between their buttocks and the trolley. I suspect that many people are not aware of themselves as physical objects

 Shopping should not be a social occasion.

The Last of the Homegrown Tomatoes

 

For the first time for several months I bought some tomatoes today. Apart from a few unripe fruit that may or may not ripen indoors, I've now used up all the crop from my own plants. They ripened rather later than usual this year - I attribute that to a shortage of sunshine at the time they should have started to ripen, but I still had plenty of fruit in the end. I have saved seed for next year.

Praising Virtual Firework displays

 

We didn't hear a great many fireworks this year. Despite the cancellation of the usual town display in the park individual efforts seemed quite restrained though they were spread over several days.

I did wonder though whether actual displays of arial chemistry are needed. Spectacular displays in many places have been filmed in recent years. Those could be made available on the Internet, or even broadcast on television on special occasions.

It should be possible to write a program to simulate a firework display, at a virtual location chosen by the user.

Pets need not be terrified, spectators need not be injured. Let all fireworks be virtual.

A Floriforous November

 

Even though it is now the second half of November, less than five weeks before the shortest day, there are still quite a few flowers in the garden - two sorts of jasmine, begonias, Mexican daisies, zonal pelargoniums, blue campanula, cyclamen, feverfew, and several others whose names escape me.