My Sunday Photo - Maintaining Social Distancing

I abandoned a food shop on Thursday in Marks and Spencers due top lack of social distancing. I made it through the chilled aisles and then joined the queue with a joint of beef, cheese and milk.

There was a woman queuing up to purchase 1 mango, with her adult daughter who was buying 1 packet of sweets. There was also no way I could maintain 2ms distance at the tills, there was a rope behind me and I was told to move forward to let people pass behind me.

I made a complaint to the woman at the door on leaving and was told they were following government guidelines and only had 37 of the allowed 40 people in the store, the time I was in there.

I have been going to Waitrose once a fortnight and the local Londis once a week to top up with milk and to buy and post my mum a TV guide and some sweets in between the online food shops I have arranged for her.

I'd opted to go to M&S as I wanted to buy some bits and pieces for care packages and birthday gifts for family members in poundstretcher and poundland and decided to visit the retail park to minimise the amount of time I was out and the number of people I came in contact with.

It seems that a lot of people think if they are wearing a mask and gloves it's ok to literally barge past you, or wear a silly grin and tiptoe. I'm not sure these are proven methods to prevent the virus from spreading.

I also made some outdoor social distance visits to deliver care packages to family and meet with 2 separate friends on 2 separate occasions. We stayed outdoors, maintained more than the 2ms distance requirements and for less than an hour.

It did mean I left my local area and travelled 35 miles to make these visits, sadly I passed very close to the Welsh Border and where my mother lives, but I didn't go and visit her as she is on the vulnerable list due to her age and I'm not allowed to enter Wales. On Friday there were police road blocks between the Forest of Dean and Monmouth.

I did tweet about my trip on Friday, there have been a few sub tweets aimed in my direction. But I was well within the guidelines of what I could and couldn't do.

I certainly felt safer and more at ease not just because I was meeting with people I knew and could trust, but I was meeting with them in an open space, I took my own deckchair, drink and snacks and the gifts were handed over wearing rubber gloves and after I dropped them, I retreated so they could be picked up.

Have you met up with anyone outside your household? How do the meeting go?

Post Comment Love - 8th-10th May

I don't know about you but lockdown is planned around food. Making sure I get what I need, meal planning to ensure it doesn't go out of date. I find the best way for me to plan my meals is to batch cook every 2 weeks.

I'm trying to minimise the number of times I have to go shopping, I'm managing a supermarket shop in person or if I'm lucky online once every 2 weeks. I then pick up fresh milk and a few treats once a week from the local shop and also buy a TV guide and sweets that I post to my mum.

Fortunately I've managed online shopping for my mum, I place an order with the supermarket each week, with a list of foods I know my mother likes and she'll add a few things, namely sweets and cakes, 2 days before it gets delivered. My niece and her husband have been popping out for milk, bread, fruit and yogurts to top up in between deliveries and they then let me know what they want to add to the online order for themselves.

I'm paying for mums shopping, she'll pay me back when she's able to get to a bank. She rarely uses the ATM, I can't see her doing online banking anytime soon.

How are you managing your shopping? Are you shopping for others?

Stephanie and I would love to hear about what you've been up to this week.

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Letting the side slip with reducing plastic and food airmiles

I've been in the UK for a week, repossessing our family home. Tenants have just left everything they didn't want and it's now my responsibility to remove everything, sadly it will all go to landfill. I wasn't in the mood, nor did I have time to sort through the full bins they left outside and all the waste from the house was swiftly removed by the removal firm who have piled it up by the side of the house until I rent a skip.

Back in Dubai, extremely tired after a night flight and the stress of the week and having to take the cat for her travel injections, I did a quick shop.

Whilst I had my reusable bags in my car, I didn't have my food nets or an old plastic bag to pack my meat in separately from the rest of the chilled foods.

No apologies for buying a plastic container with pre sliced carrots in at double the price. I suffer with chronic pain and having spent the week removing 101+ screws and nails from the walls of the house, I am suffering and can't hold a pen at the moment, let alone peel and chop carrots.

Having brought back with me in my case some Gluten Free cakes (I'm wheat free) that I can't buy over here, it made me look at the air miles my food has travelled.

I don't normally shop in Waitrose in the UK or Dubai as I find it too expensive, but we have little choice here other than Carrefour and I couldn't take the cat with me to a mall, so Waitrose it was while she was at the vets nearby.

Some foods have travelled quite some distance, others were at least packaged in the UAE, but I have no idea where they are from originally and some foods are actually grown and made locally. I should really make more of an effort to purchase locally grown/made foods and with my husband working in the food industry over here, he should be able to tell me more.

Risotto rice from???? Packaged in the UK

New Zealand

Produced in the UK for the UAE market

Pate from the Czech republic

Beetroot from ???? Packaged in the UK

Ecuador

Smoked salmon from ???? Packaged in the UAE

Yogurt made in the UAE

Vine tomatoes grown in the UAE, sadly in plastic packaging

Do you know where your food comes from and how many air miles it takes to reach your plate?

Unfortunately living in a desert not much is grown here and whilst products can be made and packaged here, produce still has to be flown in.

Did you know Marks and Spencer actually import British milk to the UAE?

Week 12 My Sunday Photo Just a normal Sunday

Arriving in Dubai on December 19th and living in 2 different hotels till the beginning of February with 2 teenagers who returned to the UK before we moved into our new home, I've been trying to establish a routine. We had a full week in the house with all our belongings in their new places before our first visitor arrived for a week, then we had a week at home before hubby flew out to South Africa for work, then another visitor, hubby has flown to Turkey today for a week, then we have a week together and the youngest comes out for Easter, then 5 days later I fly to the UK for 2 weeks, on my return we will have a few days together before hubby flies out to the states for 2 weeks, then i think we have 3 weeks together before I fly out to Canada for 3 weeks.

So I guess this is my routine now, home, travel, visitors and repeat. This afternoon will be spent putting the food shop away and baking cakes, making soup and preparing a week's worth of meals for one so I don't just eat all the goodies.