Is it ok if I shop here?

Basically, I am a Tesco man. Easy in, easy out, has mostly what I want and there's usually a welcome bit of banter at the checkout.
So, why am I so intimidated by Waitrose? I can never go there without first taking a shower, shaving and changing my socks and underpants. Even then, I feel scruffy, out of my comfort zone, an interloper. My instinct is to wear gloves so I don't actually HANDLE the goods I want to buy. Oh yes, and their wine selection is pedestrian. Not that I mind being on foot when I buy booze, but there's nothing in their racks that would cause a bishop to kick a hole in a stained glass window.
The fact that the women at the checkouts NEVER smile doesn't help.
Sainsbury's doesn't bother me in the same way, pretentious as it may be, but mostly because I can never take seriously a capitalist who believes in socialism. That, and the fact that they no longer stock Brinjal Pickle.
I cannot comment on the others: Morrison's, Asda, Coop, etc, because there aren't any in my area.
But Waitrose bothers me. They have some good stuff, a lot of it better than the equivalent in Tesco's, but still, I only shop there when it is inconvenient to do otherwise. Maybe if they instructed their checkout women to smile more, and maybe show a bit of cleavage, they could win another regular customer.
PS The photo is of a Tesco checkout girl: I thought it might help Waitrose to get the idea.....

Zootoca vivipara, so that's what it is!

My new neighbour Alison, accompanied by her daughter Clare (actually, it was the other way round) popped round this afternoon, Clare anxious to show me the contents of her jamjar: a lizard-type creature about an inch long. I am flattered that they think that I know everything about Nature, and I don't want to lose face in front of a twelve-year old, so I put on my serious face (not easy when you are shirtless and in shorts from which two white legs descend like bits of knotted string}, and peered into the jar. Well, I do know enough to know that it was a lizard and not a newt, and I do know enough to know that it will be a common lizard. So I pronounce on it.
We discuss, we ruminate, we speculate, and then comes the dreaded moment: "Are the babies born live, or do common lizards lay eggs, like crocodiles?" At least I know that it isn't a baby crocodile, but after that, the bloom fades on my cheek, or rather the reverse. Then I notice the scientific name in the book: Zootoca vivipara. A pretty good clue there, I think you will agree.

God and Muslims

Oh my goodness, this time, Mrs Trellis even posted a pic to go with her amazing letter!

Dear Gloria Hunniford, she writes, well, you HAVE been profilic recently, my dear! (I hope you don't mind me mydearing you, but I feel I know you, having watched you so many times on Sunday TV, rabbiting on about God and why we must be nice to Muslims etc).
You're like me, my dear, your neck's gone, but that's a cross we attractive older women have to bear, isn't it? How sensible of you to wear those chiffon scarves! When I say that you are attractive, I don't want you to think that I am one of those women who finds other women, well, you know, although I did once have a hot flush while watching Cilla Black on Blind Date, but that might have been the cheese and pickled onion supper that the late Mr Trellis and I were eating at the time. Fortunately, he didn't notice, but then, men don't, do they?
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, you being so abundant, literally-speaking. It's wonderful that you find so many different topics to write about, although most of the time I think what you write is incomprehensive, not wishing to give offence, you understand.
I don't mean to be cricital, but I think you ought to stick to safe topics like God and Muslims.
Yours fraternally
Blodwen Trellis, Widow, Normal, Retired

Goodbye, Dolly Who?

I have, as I mentioned before, an impressive repertoire of Old Tyme Music Hall songs in my noddle, inherited from the days when my mother played them on the piano while my father sang them and I hovered between ecstasy and death as he threw me enthusiastically into the air during the crescendos. Who can forget "On Mother Kelly's Doorstep", "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree", "I'll Be Your Sweetheart", "Hold Your Hand Out, You Naughty Boy" and the rest? Who can forget them indeed?
The answer is: I can. That is to say, the music is still there, but there are more lines containing the words "de da de de da dee dee" than there used to be. I think it's time I invested in a new cerebral CPU and a few more gigs of cerebral RAM.
Either that or I'm stuck with the likes of "Goodbye Dolly, I must leave you, tho it da de da my heart to go".

Mad Molly Metcalfe

yan tan tether mether pip
azer sezer akker conter dick
yanadick tanadick tetheradick metheradick bumfit
yanabum tanabum tetherabum metherabum jiggit

The above is real, and probably still in use in the rural north of England. Ponder it, and see if you can hazard a guess at what it is all about. A clue: Jake Thackray used it in one of his songs, about a shepherdess called Molly Metcalfe.
I find it awesome and humbling, both. I promise I will give you the solution in a later post.

J Allsop of that Ilk

I am slowly beginning to realise that I have a very odd ilk. Delicacy precludes any detailed revelations here, but with every new page opened - or more aptly, every stone upturned - in the Allsop Family History, it seems that new facts generate more questions than answers, more fog than light.
It is not I researching the Allsop clan, but my step-nephew, Edward. Our first contact some years back was when I received an email from him saying "I think your father was my grandfather", an opening line that Noel Coward would have minced across a busy street to procure.
Edward is technically by step-nephew, because my father was married twice, the first time to Clara Jane Dingley (I know her name from an inscription in a book), who gave him two children: Dennis (Edward's father) and Doreen (with whom I am still in contact); and the second time to my mother, Mabel France, who gave him two children, my sister Betty (1928-1963) and me (1936- ?), who was first diagnosed as a fibroid.
Never mind all that. The mishegoss is the chronology of his first wife's death (in childbirth, giving birth to Doreen) + my mother's appearance on the scene (before first wife's death?) + the date, circumstances and location of the second marriage.
There is more, but I will keep that for my memoirs, and it's all a bit confusing since what I learned from my mother (plus the very very little that I gleaned from my father on those rare days when he noticed that I wasn't a fibroid) does not match what I am finding out from Edward, and Edward's various correspondents.
In the end it doesn't matter, it's more like an itch that I can't scratch, but this is a cautionary tale: don't ask if you can't handle the answers. A friend of mine, a good man except for one blind spot - he is antisemitic - researched his family history but gave up abruptly when he discovered that he had Jewish ancestry. He won't talk about it, but I thought it was a delicious irony. Serves the bugger right.

Plums, in this case, are not dear

I just invited my neighbour to examine my plums with a view to making them her own. Against all the odds, my Rivers plum tree has again produced a crop, and I simply can't eat or use all of them. Hence the invitation. Good for making jam? Kim bilir?
My vine, which started out on the south side of the house and has now moreorless taken over the west side too, is equally prolific, but, apart from gobbling the odd handful, I don't use them. I believe they are good for making wine, and it is possible that my neighbour's husband might be tempted. So far, nobody has, and they end up with the pourriture noble before withering on the vine.
Birds, especially thrushes, are grateful for both the plums and the grapes. Meinetwegen I just think these fruits are beautiful to behold, whatever happens to them in the end.
PS I have had a squirrel on my nuts again. This has got to STOP!