Loads of money saved on shopping

I've been trying to get back into the swing of things today, it helps that I have a lot to do. It seems strange that I don't have to look out for Lily any more, like there's something missing, which there is. One minute life is good and ok, then I remember his little face and I want him back.

Being wanted elsewhere helps to ease the sadness. Mum cat and the kittens need me, Scruff needs me as Barry is still in hospital, Rocky dog will need me when he comes back maybe tomorrow, and my own Bugsy and Mayze cats need me. Keeping busy is what keeps me going, I have no time to be idle.

Last night I went to visit Barry, he is waiting for a pacemaker to be fitted. He seems in quite good spirits apart from missing his dog, and being afraid to cough because it hurts his injured back.

After that I went straight to Tesco to get my reduced groceries. Sometimes I am lucky sometimes not, it depends on if they have bought in too much stock and people have not bothered to go shopping. Yesterday there was a lot of rain so that kept people indoors. Lucky for me because I got loads of crazy bargains. I have added my shop to the list on my Food Diary, link at the top of the page if people are interested. The trolley full of shopping came to £9.31. If I had bought it at full price it would have cost a massive £64.52. This has to be the best shopping trip I have ever had by far. A saving of £55.21. Every item had a yellow reduced sticker on it. For the next two weeks I will eat like a Queen.

Shopping like this is such good fun, I had a bit of a banter going on with the man with the ticket machine who was marking down the fruit and veg. He had a lot of bags of peas, and asked how much I wanted to pay for them. I said oh, 10p a bag would be good. He said, how about 5p a bag? Wow, even better, ha ha. I had four bags. Then he said how much for the apricots? I asked him if they were sweet as I don't normally buy them. He took the wrapper off and said, try one, so I did. They were reduced from £1.99 to 10p, so I had three punnets. The staff were passing the message to each other to mark down the price to what the customer wanted to pay, most things were 10p.  

If you notice there ain't a lot of junk in there. It is mostly good quality fruit and veg. What I shall do is first eat things that are more likely to deteriorate quickly, checking the condition each day to see if anything has to be eaten immediately. I will eat everything, nothing will be chucked away. I have given away two punnets of strawberries and a punnet of apricots to friends. When I got home I checked my receipt and found that one item had been scanned at the original price at the till, so today as I was in town, I went back to complain. Customer Services gave me a refund of £3.14, so even better.

Here is a photo of Scruff, patiently waiting for his master to return. I went to the hospital to see Barry this afternoon and he tells me nothing has happened yet and he thinks he won't get the pacemaker till Monday now. Oh dear poor Scruff. It's a good job he only lives up the road, I can keep going in to see him. Tonight I actually got him to go for a proper walk. He doesn't want to go far normally without Barry. He is a lovely gentle boy.

This is my dinner tonight, it cost a few pennies. The dearest thing was the tuna steak at 28p. The wine was a gift.

As a reward to myself for managing to get an extremely cheap shop, I have bought a ticket for a show next week at the new Baths Hall in town. I saw the Ladyboys of Bangkok about ten years ago in Salford Manchester, I absolutely loved them, so I thought a nice treat would be to see them again. I asked at the booking office if I could have a look at the seating before I bought the ticket, because I wanted to be sure to get the right seat. The young lady was very helpfull, she took me in and let me try the seats in different parts of the theatre. I chose one on the side balcony. I am so looking forward to this. Anyway, bed time. Toodle pip.