Hi Everybody
When I was in our local supermarket this week I had a mission in mind, to find out the cost of a tea bag. I found that a box of 240 tea bags by a popular brand was £3.49.
Now as I had passed my O level Maths exam back in 1955, I immediately worked out that was 1.45416667pence per tea bag. You might be thinking this is all Rubbish but there was a serious purpose to my mission. A few days earlier we met our friends as we do most weeks for lunch and this week we chose to meet at a garden centre. Obviously, it is a quiet time for garden enthusiasts so nearly all of them have, apart from a regiment of Christmas trees that you wonder how they manage to sell as most of the people we know have an artificial tree that they dust off every year, masses of Christmas decorations that I am sure were there last year but with a little more dust on them and at a higher price, and of course a cafe. Ok, don't worry we will be back to the tea bags soon. The food at these places may not satisfy the most decerning critic but it is generally perfectly acceptable. We decided on the food order knowing full well the prices, but when it comes to drinks you know what is on offer without looking at the menu so we ordered a pot of tea for 2 with a pot of fruit tea for 2 for our friends. As we were eventually ready to gaze at the Christmas decorations and Christmas trees we had no intention of buying, it was time to pay the bill which brought on a now fairly familiar reaction in these days of inflation, "How much?". Now, I know that when you order a pot of tea for 2 you generally get two cups each from cups that are not exactly pint sized but £11-60 for two pots of tea in the Ritz would make me say "How much"? never mind a garden centre. Ironically also this week we watched a TV travel programme of Simon Reeves visiting the tea plantations of Kenya, Zaire and Uganda with workers earning just over £1 a day and nothing when the weather did not permit picking. In addition, many children worked in the fields rather than go to school to provide a bowl of rice a day for themselves and their families. There is something very seriously wrong with the world we live in.
Last week I introduced you to afternoon tea at Dot's Grandma and Grandad's over 60 years ago where we had too much to eat while carefully avoiding the buckets of coal under the table. That however was only part of the story as after the table was cleared and the washing up completed, all eyes were attracted to the 12" black and white television in the corner as we sat in the dark At 7 pm it was Hawaii Five-0, an 'exciting' American cop series, followed an hour later by two hours of Sunday Night at the London Palladium. At exactly 10 pm my lovely mother in law shot out of her chair, scrambled with her skirt which by now was somewhere near her chest - good job we were in the dark - as 10 pm was her bedtime. In less than five minuted she was gone. Our six hour tea and television was over for another week and apart from the during tea, we had not spoken to or even seen Grandma and Grandad. Happy days.
You are strongly advised to not open any Emails that you consider to be dodgy but it is this time of the year when that Email arrives inviting us to renew our car insurance. What a stupid word to use - invited - when we have no choice but to reinsure the car if you want to stay on the road. This year our car insurance was just under £500 with an increase on the previous year of about £5. Next year our car insurance will be just over £800 for the same cover as before. That is despite the fact that I have been driving since 1955 and have never ever made a claim on the insurance, have only once been caught speeding and that was in the 1960s., keep our car in a locked garage and now only drive about 7000 miles a year. Like every previous year, I searched the internet to find a better deal but this year the best price I could find was nearly £900. Of course, I know that I could damage our car tomorrow, but I have long held the view that by now they should be paying me to insure the car, but that makes a mockery of the supposed current inflation rate of about 7%. Good job we have renewed our free bus passes. The only problem is that you only see about three buses a day and they are not going in the right direction or to the destination we want.
Just a Thought :
My friend put a teabag in his mouth and filled it with boiling water. He must be some kind of mug.
My friend was on the TV this week. When he's drunk he'll sleep anywhere.
What's the difference between a whole life insurance policy and a man? A whole life policy eventually matures.
Brian