Tesco rules the world.

With a household of nine doing the weekly shoping is less of a chore than a military operation.

One that has been complicated by the great Tesco decision to upgrade our local store whilst it was still open, desperate not to hand a penny to the opposition.

This in turn has severly impeded her normal routine run up the aisles in a certain order.

The cost of everything had also really started to intrude.

Today we started our expedition in Bookers the local wholesaler. Bread milk beans and fruit juice are substantially cheaper here. Today there was loads of short dated bread which we hoovered up to put in the freezer. Similarly large packs of beef and chicken to be broken into smaller packs and frozen.

Whoever says UK inflation is set at 3% really needs to get out more. Our shopping bill is about 30% up in the last 6 months alone. This has severely impacted our lives, add to that diesel having sailed past £1.20 and closing in rapidly on £1.30 a litre the belt is being severly tightened. I really do not know how those on fixed low incomes stay alive.

So anyway into tesco we went and blundered round the new layout with her getting more and more agitated.

Finally we arrived at one of their new fast self service auto checkouts. This is clearly a windows driven piece of software. With a seres of annoying beeps lurches and regular stubborn refusals to do anythings this is the sort of check out operator who would normally be rewarded by a quick bop on the nose!

Still there is a limit to the fun to be had and we are now home. Our resident footie addict is waiting for the cup final to start. Me , I am going to do something more interesting , like watch paint dry.....

R