The Russians Are Coming!!!!!

My elderly mother loves a bargain. Sadly, buying so much food because it’s on offer is counter-productive. If you are buying so much food that you end up throwing it out because it has exceeded its best before date or that you have become utterly sick of the stuff, then how can it be considered a bargain?

There are some items that can be considered less of a risk. I’m sure cheap tea bags taste the same regardless of whether they go beyond their best before date. Do they even have a best before date? What is the shelf life on factory floor dust? Despite this, mum will continue to bulk buy tea bags when a supermarket has an offer on, even though she is the only person in her household that drinks it. It concerns me that she has stock piled so much that I will be lumbered with it long after her we’ve cried at her funeral. I’m not sure I want to hold a one-off car boot sale just to pay for her funeral costs.

She single-handedly keeps our local butcher in employment. I’m convinced without my mother’s capital, they would fall into administration. Every time we approach the window I see no customers but can feel the friction of our butcher rubbing his hands together as he makes eye contact with my mother. Before you can blink, she is being beckoned into his establishment and suddenly, once static employees find themselves frantically trying to remember how to use their rusty knives.

On some occasions, she comes out with half a pig. That is not hyperbole to hook people into this story. No, that comes later. My mother on occasions will buy a side of a pig, to save money. Her argument is as all this pig was part of the same animal; it should all be of the same quality. Then we anguish for the next six to twelve months of what to eat at meal times, when in truth, we are only limited to pork, because as I type this, inflatable fridges have yet to be invented.

She has the same approach to detergents, whether it is washing up liquid, fabric conditioner or washing liquid. Our bathroom is currently stock piled with bottles, smelling of Summer Breeze and Blueberry and Jasmine Creation. I have no idea of what they are or what they mean!

I call this level of stock piling, holocaust buys. Should the Russians reignite the cold war and launch a nuclear assault, at least we will have the luxury of having clean plates and aromatic smelling cottons wafting through our air-raid shelter.

#miscellaneous