Domesticali

Reviews

Ready for another tale from my in-box? Here it is. An email from Waitrose.

Now before we start, can I just say how much I adore Waitrose. I go there pretty much every single day. Partly because I have two teenage boys who will not stop eating. But also, because  I am addicted. Yes, I've said it. I am a Waitrose addict.

Okay, so in part it's the free coffee and newspaper - well I suppose free-ish if you factor in the spending of £10 a day on groceries, but hell, the family love to eat, so it could be worse. So every day I have my free coffee in my re-useable cup, because it's Waitrose and they are gently steering us towards being better people and saving the planet. And I perch for a moment and drink it in the in-store cafe, where I sometimes have a chat with one of the other Waitrose fans. You aren't supposed to do that, because the cafe is always full - probably because lots of folk seem as keen on the free coffee as I am. But it's nice, because there is often a lonely elderly person sitting there and you can have a bit of a chat and a look at the newspaper and think about what's for supper in peace.

And I inevitably bump into someone I know, because my entire town love Waitrose and so you can never go in there without running into someone you know. Which is good, but also bad if you are a sweaty mess after tennis or filling your trolley with unhealthy rubbish for the teenagers - did I mention they WILL NOT STOP EATING.

So I was quite happy to see an email from Waitrose in my in-box. What with being a big fan and all. They wanted me to write some product reviews on my shopping. Okay - I like an honest product review. Very useful if I am contemplating buying a sweater online and somebody mentions it comes up short in the arm, so I know I needn't bother because I have arms like an Orangutang. But they wanted a review on a this.

Seriously?

It's cress. What am I supposed to say? It is exactly as described on the box. Cress. Is it the cressiest cress I have ever tasted? I don't know! I just stuck it in my salad bowl and got on with it. Nobody in the family who WILL NOT STOP EATING commented on the cress specifically. I haven't conducted a taste comparison with cress from other leading supermarkets. Mostly because I am always in Waitrose because of the free flipping coffee!

But you know what really traumatised me? I clicked on the link they sent and found this:

Forty two people have written a review on the cress punnet. 

Shall I let that sink in for a moment? Forty two product reviews, for a salad vegetable that costs 23p.

Waitrose, we must all really love you a lot.

Memory Thief

There was an email in my inbox this morning from Flickr. Change is coming. Charges for over a thousand photographs. I've been part of Flickr since 2006, but I only upload there selectively - I haven't put a photo on Flickr since 2017 - surely there can't be that many. But when I checked - 2300.

 

So I am left with the dilemma of a drastic cull or another billed subscription. What price to put on memories?

 

But I have to tackle this. Enough procrastination - I can do it. There are fourteen photographs of cookie cutters - not good ones, just a document of how many of the blessed things I have (had?) - it has been so long since I baked a shaped sugar cookie that I don't even know. They can go.

Seventy six photographs in an album entitled Cloudcollecting. They are just clouds - some of them I can look at and associate with a time and place, but others are just when the sky caught my eye. I suppose I could let them go, but it is a little bit painful.

And then there are the ones I just can't get past. The ones that make my stomach ache slightly at the thought of the passing of those years. I suppose the ones that if I were a better person, I would have printed out into well organised photo books. 

But I didn't, because I thought I would always be able to keep them here, in their little digital nest. And now I have to decide if it is worth a monetary sum to have them. And I feel like my memories are being hijacked.

And now I've wasted another hour reminiscing over them and am still in the same place I was before. And if you costed an hour of my time, it would have paid the annual subscription charge. Full circle. 

Muscle Memory

This afternoon, I spent a happy half hour setting up a blog for a new friend. She is heading off on an adventure to faraway places, but didn't want to broadcast her absence by sharing photos on Facebook. And what better receptacle for memories than a blog? 

But handy though a blog is, to capture big, exciting things like a long planned trip, it is the small quotidian things that make up a life really. And taking the time to record them is the best way of appreciating them.

Because I tried, I really did, to embrace the concept of a daily gratitude list, but it made me cringe a little each time I tried to write one. Don't know why - they seen to work for other people, but not for me. But blogging? Turns out it's deeply ingrained in my muscle memory. Even if I need to remind myself to take more photographs. With the camera, not my phone.

Gratitude and iPhone photography - two millennial skills that elude me.