It's the supermarket 'Rictus' day...

Christmas Eve...

This is the day when tradition demands that we visit as many supermarkets as we can, and count the number of customers with a manic fixed grin on their faces!

If you study the Rictus Day syndrome - as we used to in years past, you were able to arrive in the car park and spot the four-by-four being furiously parked, and most of a family of a mother and three children would spill out. The mum was already gesticulating to the children to stay close by. The Rictus is about to kick in, but not quite yet...

On entering the supermarket - we'll make it a Waitrose, but it could be anywhere, except for some of the cheapo budget shops - the grin begins to appear on the mum's face, especially as she can't find her loyalty card to unlock the zapper which is just by the door. A small queue builds up, and a man at the back begins to mutter!

After snatching the zapper from its cradle, (always on the bottom row for some reason), the grin develops into anguished, teeth-baring desperation, as the shopping list is right at the bottom of the voluminous handbag, and the queue for the coffee machine watches with interest as the various contents are spread all over the empty shopping trolley. The list is discovered tucked into another purse the size of a Pears Cyclopaedia.

The Rictus has now extended to the neck muscles, where it will remain for the rest of the shopping extravaganza, and while the children happily inspect all the chocolate stacked up by the first aisle, the quest for comestibles becomes a murderous race rather like the chariot scene in Ben Hur, which by coincidence also has Charlton Heston riding with possibly the first rictus grin ever shown on the wide screen, but there again, he didn't have to brave the fury of Waitrose customers!

So we pass the fruit and vegetable aisle, taking an armful of any salad stuff with a yellow ticket, and the hunt for Manchego and Comte cheese begins in earnest. The various decibels of 'NO NO NO' are heard by other shoppers by the bread shelves as the group passes the pizzas, and the next aisle becomes bereft of Kalamata Olives and Miso Paste. 

The grin is now beginning to attract the attention of the staff manning the CCTV cameras, as the trolley enters the final phase of the expedition with a wild-eyed, gasping grimace extending to the carefully knotted Prada scarf, and also now affecting the hands, which have developed claw-like characteristics as the eye-brows contract to a fair Clarke Gable impression, but with additional French accents, and word goes out to the floor staff to check her trolley 'as a precaution'!

That final dash to the self-checkout till ends in a shuddering crash, and the monster bag of crisps, thoughtfully added by one of the children, splits open to the vocal equivalent of the Rictus, which is a sort of strangled shriek, combined with steam-train sound effects!

The scramble is over as the bank card whistles past the machine, and the Rictus is still maintained right up to the door, when there's a momentary lapse, and the shoulder blades start to droop!

That's until the trek back to the four-by-four is categorised as 'Rictus Extra-Violent', when it is discovered that they've forgotten the Tamarind paste...

Tales from Christmases past...

 

The annual trek to the attic, to collect up all the Christmas decs which were chucked up at the end of last year, and cart them down the ladder to display yet again, has started in earnest!

This year is going to be very different, with Scrobs acting solo, after my dear Senora popped off in the Summer, but between me and the Houndess, we're going to light up the rooms and blaze away, as The Senora would have threatened me with all sorts of torture, if  I didn't, and loss of tinctures was always going to be at the top of the list!

We've only been here in The Turrets for about thirty-five years, but the amount of clobber which accumulates in the attic still seems to grow, witout any rhyme or reason, and of course, there is always something up there, which you just cannot throw away!

Here in the pic, are two Christmas albums I was given nearly seventy years ago! The Brer Rabbit book came from my dear sister, who was about eleven or twelve then, and still going strong! I was an avid fan of Brer Rabbit, and the stories were all informative, fabled and easy for young impressionable children  to read and admire! I would have been seven then...

The Kit Carson album of  1956, arrived when we'd all moved to the new house that dad had bult built. It would have been our second Christmas there, and I was well into owning several cap guns, dad's old army bush hat, holsters made from cardboard, and all the paraphernalia that comes with being a cool cowboy! (Come to think of it, that was quite a change from the other book in just two years, but we all grew up playing outside, getting muddy and driving wooden carts around the woods back then, and life in the lanes and fields was a necessity...)!

Reading the stories again opens up such a huge chasm of how children absorbed fiction back then, the drawings were all there of course, but the writers always seemed to capture an eight-year-old's imagination, and ensure that the stories, however beyond reach, were still understandable, likeable and so really captivating!

And I haven't even started the rapture on finding all my Rupert Bear albums yet...

After all this time...

 

As some chums know, some of my formative years were spent in a Category C prison boarding school in Wales, and despite all that, I left with many friends, good memories, a prize for music, some rugby skills and some experience of a tougher life ahead, and how to deal with it.

On one occasion, a friend asked me if I would like to go and have Sunday tea with one of his aunts, who lived not far away. Visits such as these were forbidden of course, but, like buying five Woodbines, we all did things like this anyway!

So there was a scrubbed Scrobs, sitting by a roaring open fire, chatting with all my chum's relations, and having a great time! They were all lovely people, and were extremely kind to a new face at their tea table!

Welsh cakes were in abundance, and I'd never had one before, so it was a new experience for me, and of course, absolutely delicious, being home-made!

Visiting my local Waitrose recently, there on the shelf, near the crumpets, muffins and buns, (watch it Scrobs, stop describing the staff - Ed.), was this packet of the delicacies, so they went straight into the basket, and off we went!

And until only a day or so ago, did I realise that they can be fried, grilled, or presumably toasted, and that really is the answer for a perfect delicacy, which has now become a staple, especially for breakfast, with yet more coffee...*

*see Scrobs last week!