Pesky on line ads

To pay or not to pay – this is the question I have been asking myself regarding on line app ads. I have been grappling with this for a while now. But so far, I have resisted and just get on with something else while the ads are playing. Like cleaning up my inbox which still miraculously has 15821 emails despite my effort to unsubscribe and delete. Sometimes these ads play for 20 seconds and sometimes they seem to go on for ever. I have almost emptied an entire dishwasher while an ad has been playing during one of my scrabble games.

And one particular ad has been gnawing away at my patience as it has now found its way onto my word feud, my bridge and my spelling app, and also on my computer, my iPad and on my iPhone. It is the hateful Sophie Howard. Nothing personal I have never met her, but I already loathe her. At first, she was just a bit annoying but now – well don’t get me started. If she tells me again about how wonderful she is with this big white toothy smile I will puke all over my keyboard.

“I am going to tell you how to turn some bad news into goods news,” she says. Really so how can you turn the Cummings affair into good news, 37,000 dead – the highest in the world into good news, mass job losses, the collapse of the travel, the hospitality and live music industries, mass redundancies, the entire economic future of our country go on clever dick, tell me how you can turn all of this into good news and then and only then maybe I will pay for your ad. Well got that off my chest then!

The big event today after my morning Pilates with the lovely Grace, is the food order. Grace was my teacher at Virgin gym but now she works from home and we practice from home and I am loving it. I have a routine. Monday Yoga with Sue, Tuesday Pilates with Grace, Wednesday it is Sue again, then Grace on Thursday and on Friday it is Penny and Yoga. You would think I would be fit with a nicely toned body. So, would I. That however is not the case. My arms are still flabby, my thighs dimpled, and my tummy looks as if I am 6 months pregnant. The latter has more to with my addiction to cake. More of this later. But perhaps more worrying than the body shape is my stamina. I am still huffing and puffing when I walk up any inclines. Armed with my little gizmo I can now measure my heart beats and after climbing the two flights of stairs at home it registers around 140!!! Rather alarming but I am consoled by the speed in which it returns to around 80. I guess it is my Bronchiectasis and a reminder about why I am self-isolating. Even more worrying  is that I am beginning to sound like Woody Allen. 

I have digressed again – the food order – I am a bit of a sado but this is one of the highlights of my week. Nadia my neighbour invites me on to her Ocado order and I get my fruit and veg delivered by Eddy, local stall holder and the Odd Box which delivers odd shaped food which supermarkets deem unacceptable because they are not of perfect shape and colour. Planning the weeks meals takes time and creativity. And with three of us eating 3 meals a day plus snacks my food bill has rocketed. We seem to be hungry most of the day. My biggest downfall is cake. Thus, the large tummy. I love cake. I could eat cake for breakfast lunch and dinner. I could eat cake as a mid-morning snack and for afternoon tea. I have even eaten cake at 3 in the morning with a glass of milk when I couldn’t sleep. Of course, the answer is simply stop baking. Which is a shame as I have only started baking since lockdown, but it looks like it is all coming to an end because I have no flour left! One online delivery farm shop was selling flour at £14 for what normally costs around £1.50. That will put a stop to my cake addiction.

Apparently, UK millers have been working round the clock milling flour 24-hours-day-seven-days-a-week to double the production of retail flour in an effort to meet demand. Producing the equivalent of 3.5million to 4 million bags weekly. Surely the great British public cannot be consuming that much flour. I hate to think what we are all going to look like post COVID19. One survey suggested that we will all have gained an average of 14 pounds. On re reading this post I have just upped my fruit and veg order and reduced my Ocado list. Its carrots, cucumber and celery nibbles from now on.

I leave you with one of those unfortunate purchases. We have all had them. When an order arrives either a fraction of the size you expected or twice as large. Linda ordered some packing stuff on Amazon but it was not quite what she expected.

“Let’s be careful out there”

Author: ladyserendipidy

Journalist, event planner, mother, animal lover, not very good bridge or scrabble player, hopeless housekeeper, ex social worker, radio producer, tv executive, hater of almost all insects especially the eight legged ones. And if I am ever allowed out of my house, intrepid traveler. View all posts by ladyserendipidy