Buttons

I went shopping yesterday and bought a jumper. It was in Edinburgh Woollen Mill, a shop that has sales almost as often as DFS, and I'd seen the jumper (grey, lambswool and angora) and liked it but not been willing to pay full price for it. Here it was at last reduced, £5 off.

There was quite big pile of them, but only one Large (and I do like my jumpers loose, can't bear to think of people seeing my rolls of back fat). And anyway, sizes don't come up very big there. Just one Large and it had the button missing (there is a keyhole feature at the neck). So I had a quick look and yes, as usual there was a spare button sewn on the label inside.

I took it to the counter, where the very bored sales assistant was lounging, and I asked whether they might have another jumper in the storeroom, as this one had a button missing.

"Naaah".

Might I have a look to see if there was a spare button? I started to unfold it on the counter but she stopped me.

"Naaah izzunt one". So, she doesn't know anything about the stock and she hadn't noticed me looking at it already.

"Cunn givyer discount". Excellent, I thought, and asked what she would offer.

20% off. (I'd have settled for 10%).

It didn't take me long to work out what the price would be, so I said yes.

"Gotter work it out on till".

It took ages. I'm not speedy at mental maths but it took her twice as long on the till as it took me in my head.

I paid her and left. I came home and looked in the button box and found a very nice little ivory (not real ivory, ivory-coloured) elephant, sewed it on and it looks much nicer than the original button would have done.

(Yes, yes, I know people don't have button boxes any more.)

I wouldn't normally try to swindle discount off, certainly not off a small and honest retailer who knew his trade. I don't have much sympathy for the big stores and certainly not for ones who employ staff who neither know nor care about their stock or customers. Husband said they must write off the losses made from lost sales or discouraged customers in the same way they write off losses from shop-lifting, and I suppose he's right. It's depressing though.

Primroses

There are primroses in flower in the garden!

A week ago, when it was Daughter's birthday and we went out for dinner, it was snow and ice and under our glad rags we were wearing wellies.

Now the primroses are out, and not just in the most sheltered spots. The snowdrops are only just pushing their snouts above ground but -

the primroses are in flower!

TV

Programmes I haven't wanted to see:

• The lost libraries of Timbuktu
• Pet chimp attack
• Muslim driving school
• Can fat teens hunt?

Snow

I hate the snow - I hate everything to do with winter. Maybe it's OK if you are indoors, somewhere warm, just looking out at it - but it is misery to be trying to get to work in it, trying to shop and just do the ordinary everyday business of living in it. I am so tired with the struggle, and so is everyone I talk to. Trying to keep balance on slippery pavements; waiting ages in two inches of frozen slush for a bus; trains that don't go the usual way to the usual place. All horrible.

My skin is so dry that it is cracking over my knuckles. My nails are breaking. My hair is like straw. I seem to have been wearing the same clothes for weeks. I am fed up with clumpy boots and wellies.

All the plants in the cold frame and in the greenhouse look half-dead or completely dead, mushy and rotten, or stiff and brown. Plants in the ground have been flattened. Everywhere is sodden and muddy and bleak.

If winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Looks like it to me.

Married love

I have now been married for more than twice as long as the First World War and Second World War combined.

Back

I was talking to a colleague in the staff room yesterday, having a bit of a rant about people and how silly they are being in the snow. There are a couple turning up to the bus stop now dressed in enormous (matching) anoraks, woolly hats, huge walking boots and a pair apiece of those silly spiked sticks, as if they were going up the Matterhorn, not getting a bus into town. "Hmmm," said my colleague, "I've got one of those spiked sticks, they're awfully useful for keeping your balance." So I had to backtrack and pretend that I thought it was only people who had two sticks who looked silly.

And I set off again on a different tack, about people on trains with rucksacks. I'd been knocked sideways that morning by some oaf with an enormous backpack, completely oblivious of what was going on behind him. "Ahh," said my colleague, "I've been using my rucksack the last couple of days."

Wouldn't it be great if Life had a "Back" button?

End of the holidays

For the first time in a lot of years I had the three days off between Christmas and New Year, which, with weekends and bank holidays, amounted to a total of 11 days off work. And I am ashamed of how little I seem to have achieved.

Meeting with friends - 2 (despite its being the festive season n'all, we hardly saw another living soul)

Phonecalls to friends - 1 (and pretty much got the brush-off)

Christmas cards - definitely fewer than last year

Shopping trips to the sales - 2 (fruitless, except for...

New pairs of boots - 1)

Lie-ins - 10 (only 1 morning did I wake up early, and was rarely late to bed)

Cups of tea and coffee - far too many, far far too many

Alcohol - too much, much much too much, but...

Dry days - 2 (amazing in the circumstances)

Time in the garden - a big fat zero, so none of the outside jobs done, trees not pruned etc etc

Murders committed - none (but plenty of urges to murder)

Resolution to work over next Christmas - 1

Pineapples

There are bargains - and bargains. Husband can never resist a bargain of either kind, hence his arrival home with four pineapples, very cheap, from the market. Notwithstanding the fact that there is no such thing as a bargain in the market (if pineapples are cheap it is because they "need using" - or, "are starting to go off", in common parlance) or that noone in the family is very fond of pineapples (Husband himself refusing to eat them in any form or under any disguise).

What on earth am I going to do with four, ever so slightly rotting, pineapples?

You can't freeze them. Jane Grigson recommends pineapple in brandy (which sounds pretty good to me, but noone but me will ever eat it, and I'm fat enough already), pineapple ice-cream (which even I don't fancy) or pineapple marmalade (and that wouldn't be heavily enough disguised for Husband, and it is a heck of a lot of work for a product the prospect of which noone actually relishes, not even me).

This evening we had pineapple and cheese (on sticks, stuck into a grapefruit) with our New Years Day fizz, and very nice it was, surprisingly for such an old-fashioned dish, much nicer than it is with the tinned pineapple it is usually made with. I am meditating gammon with pineapple for unsuspecting children tomorrow.

After that, it is just me and a tub full of chunked pineapple, in the middle of the night, when everyone else is asleep... and nightmares of multiplying pineapples.