Nowadays people eat while doing things. You see eating going on everywhere. In the library. Crossing the street. While buying food. In church,and Post office. Even Real Estate agents are eating continuously now. Lawyers eat while being presented by briefs. On TV ads you now also see large models being featured. They too eat while lounging in a Norwegian chair. This morning I watched a mother parking two young children in a child-minding place. She had a sandwich clutched between her teeth while undoing their harnesses. People eat while driving.
Cars now have twin-cup holders at front and back. Some cars have refrigerated glove boxes. They keep TV dinners in there. I heard that special mini micro-waves can be plugged in the car for some quick cooking of pizzas or sides of pork. Eating while working go hand in hand (or more likely in mouth.) Of course eating food involves the buying of it. The most normal combination is eating while shopping. What can be more convenient? The shopping cart is being filled with yet more food.
With my iPhone now used to count steps we went for a walk to town and back. Milo is getting older in tandem with us. We break our walk in town with a small latte. In winter we do rug up. Carrying coats and wearing gloves and scarf we started around 11am. During our latte stop-over we counted 2600 steps. Not bad. We resumed back again with the three of us having had a rest. Helvi decided to walk seriously and sprinted ahead of me. I can’t do that with Milo. He wants to sniff every bit of greenery before the obligatory leg-up. It makes some people smile. Often they will ask permission to pat Milo. He is indifferent to patting. He is spoiled. I wish I could get those pats. One woman who I asked for a pat said; ‘if you were as good looking as Milo you too would get patted’. A cruel world out there.
It was when Helvi went around the next corner I noticed a fast walking young women pushing a food loaded trolley past me and Milo. It has always irked me to find abandoned shopping trolleys. Was she a shopping trolley dumper? She had all the hallmarks of one. They have an arrogance about them. She did not give Milo a look. Not a good look! She stopped at her car and opened the door. Of course, needless to say, she ripped a packet of something and fed some of its contents into her mouth. Milo was busy sniffing a bit of garden belonging to the United Church. I turned my back to this young woman unloading her shopping trolley. I wanted her to be relaxed and not feel being surveyed by an elderly chagrined looking man. I so desperately wanted to know if she had the decency to return the trolley. Would my summation of her being a shopping trolley dumper be correct?
Milo, in the meantime was sniffed out and wanted to know where Helvi had disappeared to. The girl had unloaded the trolley and slammed the car door. What next? I slowly walked by and deliberately dropped a paper hanky on the pavement. This gave me time to observe what she was doing with the trolley. I bend down to pick up the paper hanky while hoping she would be able to recognise the civility and obligation of someone not littering the footpath. I was pleasantly relieved to see she walked with the trolley across the road. Was I so mistaken? Why do I so often see the bad sides of people? Am I so negative?
The woman crossed the road with the trolley and lifted it in the ‘nature strip’. She walked back to her car and drove off. She was a trolley dumper. I could have smacked her. But she was across the road. I am thinking of getting some wheel-clamps.
I was vindicated after all. The iPhone told us we did well over 6000 steps. That has to be good.
Tags: Child-minding, Cupholders, Iphone, Mini micro wave, Shopping, Trolley
Oosterman Treats Blog 
July 9, 2018 at 8:33 am |
Your radar is good.
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July 9, 2018 at 11:16 am |
Should I get a drone with picture capability, chasing and shaming trolley dumpers?
On the other hand why don’t supermarkets follow Aldi’s trolleys policy with refundable coins or tokens. It works perfectly.
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July 10, 2018 at 1:30 am |
Most supermarket trolleys in Canberra have the refundable coin/token slots. You’d have to find a new hobby! 🙂
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July 9, 2018 at 11:21 am |
Nooooo. Gerard. Not the refundable coins. We never have the right change. Some supermarkets use them some don’t so you don’t know unless you are a regular whether to hunt for coins down the back of the sofa or not. Trolley dumping is antisocial and should be dealt with severely. Our local Waitrose in Romsey had a scheme so you couldn’t take the cart out of the car park. If you crossed a certain point the wheels locked and the cart stopped. No idea how but it worked. No coins needed. I did 17000 steps today. No dog though.
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July 9, 2018 at 11:35 pm |
I always thought the coin system was alright, Andrew. They had it in Holland and France back in the seventies together with not providing plastic bags.
Only last week, the large supermarkets finally stopped supplying those single use plastic bags. It caused riots here in Australia with some shoppers so enraged the police were called who ended up tying some shoppers up on top of their trolleys.
Of course, your system in HK with electronically locking the wheels is so advanced we can only dream about that…
Your daily steps are awesome. We are happy with 6000 steps not including the vacuuming and frequency of toilet visits.
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July 9, 2018 at 12:17 pm |
I know that woman, Gez. I occasionally enjoy a bit of reverie inside her head.
She is thinking ….âsomebody from Somalia will be getting paid to retrieve this trolley.â
She is doing that chap a big favour , not realising that Peter Dutton is lying in wait amongst the oleanders – more poisonous and definitely far less attractive.
She will take the groceries home to her husband – who will find her less interesting than the soccer – but will eat the snacks she brings while berating some hapless referee.
What was it TS Eliot said about the hollow men ?
>
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July 9, 2018 at 11:44 pm |
Yes, Michael. You are right. The trolley retriever here even scans the creek into which some trolleys end up. The ducks are totally perplexed but find it handy to perch upon.
I berated a woman friend for taking the shopping trolley all the way home and then discarding it near the front garden. She said; ‘you sound just like my father.’ Unbelievably, this same woman now is the editor of an alternative health magazine.
Everything is so unpredictable and contrary…
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July 9, 2018 at 1:25 pm |
Six-thousand steps but no personal pats. I’d still call that a win! Funny post. 😄
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July 9, 2018 at 11:48 pm |
We might not get to 6000 today, Carrie. The pest control man is due but did not give any time. The white ants are marching inland and this body corporate is taking no risk.
We now have to stay put waiting for the termite man. I wonder what makes a man get the burning ambition to become a pest controller?
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July 10, 2018 at 12:08 am
Ha, thankfully at least some people want to go into the extermination business. Otherwise we’d be at the mercy of all those pests. 😄
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July 9, 2018 at 2:40 pm |
I’ve installed a wood-fired pizza oven in my car, but having second thoughts. The trunk is always full of wood, you have to open a window, to use the long-handled peel when removing the pizza, and sometimes there are downdrafts, blowing smoke into the car, when I drive over 80 mph.
Perhaps if you wheel a cart on your walks, and give people free snacks, you can get more pats. Your friend Milo can pull the cart for you!
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July 9, 2018 at 11:56 pm |
I have actually seen dogs being carried around in shopping trolleys. Super-markets generally don’t allow pets inside their stores. The large hardware emporiums do allow pets. They have to be on a leash.
I am sure that mini pizza ovens inside cars will come about, Robert. After all, with self drive vehicles will come the freedom to eat even more food. They can even use both hands to prop in the food. No worries!
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July 10, 2018 at 12:04 am
I hadn’t thought of that! Great! It’s much easier to eat with both hands. And the current regime is encouraging the use of coal over solar, so we’ll have self-driving steam engines at some point, and can make lattes and espresso with our Stanley Steamers.
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July 9, 2018 at 6:35 pm |
Somehow I knew it wasn’t going to finish good. We have them too. And no pat for Milo? How dare she? Cute post.
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July 10, 2018 at 12:02 am |
Milo usually gets lots of pats together with questions about his age.
He can be so rude sniffing their bags. One woman even opened her cooked chicken bag and gave Milo a sizable piece of hot chicken.
That is the power of a Jack Russell. While I could sit around for days getting totally emaciated and not be given a single scrap of stale bread.
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July 10, 2018 at 7:47 am |
Aw, no pats for you. 😦 But 6000 steps…excellent! 🙂
Cooper, like Milo, gets pats and he loves them! He initiates the encounters and people are thrilled. And because of Cooper I have met a lot of new people. 🙂
I do not like seeing shopping carts far from their home. 😦
PATS!!! to you, Gerard! HA! 😀
And HUGS!!! for Milo and Helvi!!! 🙂
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July 11, 2018 at 4:03 am |
Yes, and retrieving those trolleys from miles away must cost a fortune. Homeless people often take those trolleys to carry their belongings around. I would do the same.
Hugs and pats to you too.
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July 11, 2018 at 4:06 am |
What a delightful post, Gerard. I smiled all the way through. Of course, now I’m hungry after reading about all those snacks, and it’s 11 p.m., and I really don’t have anything in the house to snack on except some yogurt, or some cherries. There is ice cream, but….
We call them grocery carts here, and people generally are pretty good about stashing them properly. There are rack-like places scattered about the parking lots where you can leave them. It’s true that some people don’t make the effort to push them over to the racks, but I can’t remember seeing anyone leave the parking lot with one.
There was a homeless man who lived in the neighborhood for years; he carried all of his worldly possessions in one of the carts. It was amazingly well organized. Someone had given him a tarp to cover it, and someone else had devised a lock for its wheels. He just didn’t want to go to a shelter, or whatever. He’s gone now, but he lived a good, long life. During bad storms, freezing weather, or hurricanes, the police let him come and ride it out in the jail. Now that I think of it, he got his share of pats, too.
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July 11, 2018 at 5:54 am |
Here shopping carts do get abandoned all over the place. Some years ago I found one near the creek running at the back of our complex. It had a complete ham in it. It was double smoked and still in its wrapping.
Being after Christmas and stinking hot the ham might well have been passed its prime. Helvi would not hear of it and strongly opposed me taking it home to give it a try.
Some time later one of the carts was chucked in the creek. Another occasion we found one had been lifted up and somehow impaled on a no-parking sign.
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July 14, 2018 at 1:06 am |
Bad American habits have a habit of crossing the wide ocean and infecting other countries, I’m sad to say. I’ve seen abandoned shopping carts in some pretty inexplicable places.
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