The last thing I would be doing any December, let alone this December is shopping on the high street. My reason: I have over two hundred relatives. Most of us deliberately work part-time on a reduced income so that we can work for charities on an unpaid basis. We don’t waste money on silly things.
But I was talking to a friend who has been shopping on the high street, and she tells me she was squished together with crowds of other shoppers (groan!) who were not wearing face masks outside (fair enough it is inside we have been asked to wear them, but groan!) and she told me something I found interesting.
She said more shops have chosen to go plastic-free in their gift ranges. They are using environmentally friendly packaging. She appreciated that so much that she deliberately chose to only buy plastic free packaging. Now, I have to admit, it brought a smile to my face.
This is a time of year when the scale of wastage, pollution and over-consumption is staggering. But for those who do care about the world we live in, every little counts.
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I wrote the above about a week ago. Everything has changed over the weekend. All non-essential shops are now closed in London. The lifting of restrictions has changed dramatically. I will be all on my own on my days off this week! I can’t travel from London to Wales or to the North of England. Jack left London early. He was going to travel today, but when his mother had a fall last week, he drove straight up to his new property and he has been helping his parents with shopping over the weekend. He will stay at his place and work, spend Friday with his family and then when he is sure his parents can cope, he will make his way back down to London at some point.
Caramel 