Thursday, April 01, 2010

Big undertaking

So, I've signed up for NaBloPoMo again. This month's theme is "Big". It's an optional theme, so you may just get me wittering about nowt; or you may get me trying to post and fizzling out, as in February when my head was in a different time-zone. I shall try.

I will post with Actual Fibre Content tomorrow. Tonight I was knitting in Ely, with a group of very nice people; I was glad I hadn't taken my camera, given how wet I got on the way home...

But I had one of those OMGILovetheInternet moments on the way to knitting.

I am a bit snobby about ordering meat for Big Occasions online with the rest of my shopping, because I want to be able to see the thing before I cook it and work out what size it is, whether it looks OK, whether it will fit in my oven, etc. So I did my online order for Easter Sunday lunch without the main attraction, and relied on Ely Waitrose to have some lamb from some part of Britain. Preferably leg, but shoulder, breast... anything big enough to roast and feed 4 people. Went in there and looked at the pre-packed stuff; nope - everything, and I mean everything was from New Zealand. Went in and looked at the stuff on the butchery counter and they had a couple of dinky little racks, but nothing which said "Easter Sunday" to me. The experience was compounded by the assistant looking at me as if I was an Alien from the Planet Zog for rejecting their NZ lamb. (On the offchance that any New Zealanders look at this - I know your lamb is very, very nice; I just don't buy, or knowingly eat, any non-British meat, and am aware I'm a bit strange like that. I also don't knowingly eat non-British asparagus, or sprouts, or strawberries, or apples).

I live in a village where there is no bus service on Good Friday, and I'm busy all day on Saturday, and visitors are coming on Sunday, when there's also no bus service. At no point will I be near a supermarket or a butcher I trust to have good lamb. And then hallelujah; I was trudging toward the knitting group and realised that the library at Ely was on its late opening night. So I went for second best, ambled in there, added a chunk of leg of Welsh lamb to my online order for tomorrow afternoon, and will see what I get when it arrives. I'm aware I could have ordered something wonderful from one of the London butchers' in advance, but I've only just found out friends are in town this weekend...

I just love being able to wander into a public library out of the rain in a small town on a Thursday night, and order groceries to be delivered from a supermarket 16 miles away to a home 11 miles away... and then go to the local hotel and chat with knitters and crocheters and stitchers... The combination of the global and the local the Web allows continues to astound me.

1 comment:

Saren Johnson said...

Good luck on the posting every day.