Up until now I have tended to treat this compulsory isolation of "at risk" people with some amusement, and I have complied but with the feeling that it isn`t really mean me.
However, a few days ago, realising the the larder was becoming somewhat depleted I attempted to arrange for Home Delivery from a Supermarket, but found that not only that one, but all the others also, either "had no more slots available" or were not taking any more registrations.
Nothing daunted I drove to my nearest Supermarket, parked my car, got a trolley and tottered over to join the queue to enter. There was some whispering among those in front of me and then the Doorkeeper in charge marched over and told me I could not go in and must leave immediately, and when I refused and asked why he said that it was illegal for me to be out, and then spoke into his communicator and asked them to call the Police.
Needless to say, I didn`t wish to waste the time of our hard pressed Constabulary,so I buggered off.
As my nearest son lives over 60 miles away and both he and his wife are working full time in vital jobs I rang a neighbour and mentioned the problem to her and asked if she could add my requirements to her next shopping list; she asked what they were, I told her, and she replied that she already needed to buy those for her own family of 5, and that sales of them were restricted to 2 per person, meaning that she would need to make a special trip just for mine on top of two trips for her own family. As she runs a small business from her home I could understand her reluctance and apologised for asking her.
I suppose that I could pester all my neighbours in turn, and probably get a similar response from them but somehow that doesn`t appeal to me.
So...WHAT THE HELL DO I DO NOW?
I'm sorry to hear that HappyLad. And I'm very surprised by the reaction at that supermarket. Most of them have been taking measures to help the elderly and others most at risk. Generally the measures are different from chain to chain and even between different stores in the same chain, but it still sounds like that doorman has misunderstood something and totally over-reacted. Maybe you should have let him call the police, they probably would have told him to get someone to escort you around the store (while keeping a min 2m distance)!
That phone number from the Pheonix is probably the best place to start. Make a call and save yourself a journey.
I know that my local supermarkets are controlling numbers in store. Keeping them low with a one in one out policy so that there's enough space for people to keep a good distance from each other. That could lead to long queuing times, but none of the queues I saw were actually that bad. I noticed Iceland was opening exclusively to OAPs for the 1st hr and I heard something about them arranging priority delivery services. M&S were keeping very low numbers in store, keeping big gaps in the queue outside and letting OAPs, NHS etc jump to the front of the queue.
So if either of those are near you they may be an option in an emergency.
