All change for supermarket shoppers

ANYONE been shopping recently in two of our finest supermarkets which are being vastly upgraded?

Asda now has a multi-storey car park and two floors of shopping which makes my task of finding my vertically disadvantaged wife even more of a long shot there is so much extra space to check.

Meanwhile just across town is Morrisons which is also trying to wow shoppers but which is not so far advanced.

As luck would have it I ran in to four or five friends while quartering the store and every single one of them said they hadn’t a clue where anything was any more, adding that they were allowing much more time for shopping to deal with searching for groceries.

It brought home sharply how much creatures of habit we are since I tend to operate on auto pilot when being dragged round shopping because you can almost do it in your sleep. No longer.

Now you not only have to desperately track down almost every item in both stores but you also have to constantly reorientate yourself because nothing is as it was and there are so many new areas, new shelving and new layouts.

The whole situation was wryly summed up by one friend of mine who I hailed as he headed desperately for the wine section.

I asked him what he thought of the changes made since he came in last week and he replied: “I’ve nothing to compare them with really.

“I came in last Tuesday and I still can’t find the exit!”

It’s tougher than ever for graduates

PARENTS all over Weymouth and Portland are slowly welcoming back children into their homes who have finished their university life.

These offspring are now preparing to launch their adult life by trying to find a job and the task has never been tougher.

I know of several who work in various minor jobs in bars or cafes, earning a few pounds while they try to break into the career field they want to pursue.

Overqualification has surely never been so common and, if you need proof of that, I’m informed that one local supermarket has a member of staff on its books employed in some minor capacity who actually has a degree in marine biology.

There has even been comment that the main occupation for young unemployed in the borough is waiting to collect their inheritance!

This may explain why there is a certain amount of resistance among A Level students to the glowing picture painted by Government of the rewards gained from a three-year degree course which supposedly arms youth with the vitally important tools needed to make their way in life.

Unfortunately it now also arms them with a massive debt – more than £50,000 in some cases – so a number of students are considering less crippling education routes.

Somehow they are not being won over by Government blandishments about debt repayment and isn’t that strange. After all, if the Government does know about one thing it is about being in debt.

Don’t forget to Slip-Slop-Slap

LOBSTERS are back in season and you can take your pick of them along Weymouth seafront.

They come in all shapes and sizes from men and women the size of dumper trucks, their sunburnt flesh overflowing their costumes, to skinny jack-the-lads about town whose tattoo pledging undying love for the Red Devils is actually paler than their own ferocious sunburn.

What is it about the merest fleeting glimpse of the sun which seems to transform ordinary people into mindless worshippers of the great god Tan?

Toddlers are wheeled along the seafront with nothing to shade them from the sun’s relentless rays, people fall asleep in deckchairs and get burnt and it is so easy to see those who overindulge on a regular basis.

They are the ones sporting tasteful expanses of reddened skin shaped by costume edges or, in some cases, a mysterious line of white skin where they must have basked unaware a bar of shadow was across them.

Doctors are constantly warning about cancer dangers caused by over exposure to sunshine but it seems that some people are still quite happy to strip off and strip their skin instead of covering up. They’d do well to pay more attention to medical advice before they need medical treatment.

Some animals are luckier than others

WILDLIFE is all around us but it usually knows better than to show itself to people during daylight hours.

So I was delighted when I was out driving and saw a deer running along the verge, a yellowhammer perched on a post and a rabbit feeding away, all actually on the same 150 metre stretch of rural road.

And the best part of it was that all three creatures were alive!

Returning home I saw the remains of a number of animals along the way including a badger and what looked like a squirrel which had not found life on the road so forgiving.

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