Off your trolley*

I went shopping with Pam earlier this week, in the good way that involved coffee and cakes, egging each other to try on clothes and buy things, not that either of us needs much encouragement. We talked about how we'd like to dress inappropriately for our age and unnerved the sales assistant in the department store where we tried on wedding hats and fascinators that we agreed would be good to wear at breakfast if we ever went on a cruise together.I came home with this, a shopping trolley and I think a very beautiful one too. It was reduced, I had to buy it and use it straight away. It has easy velcro fastenings, press studs at the top to increase the size, a smaller department at the back and will pack flat. It was so handy walking down the High Street, not just for purchases but for my mac and if I'd had my brolly that would have gone in too. We'd been having a discussion about our capacious and well packed handbags, how our shoulders got achy and we always carried far more than we needed. Pam's solution was to look for a smaller handbag, mine to buy the trolley.

It received a luke warm reception from Mr FF when I got it home and the only comment has been 'is that it's permanent place' as it currently stands in the hall mainly so that I can admire it every time I pass. Actually I'd quite like to fill it with yarn - shopping and knitting every girl's dream.

I'm already a bag lady, I try not to take plastic carriers at checkouts and have many many shopping bags, Cath Kidston, Lulu Guinness, Boden, as well as a big collection of supermarket bags for life, they make em I buy em. There's something of a foreign holiday feel about pulling a bag along behind you that lifts my spirits or maybe its just the beautiful colours and the chunky little wheels. Pam has made me promise not to start using the trolley as a walking aid as I get older, ie, pushing it in front of me like a wheeled zimmer frame, no chance I'm sticking with the trolley dolly image for a long time yet.

*Off your trolley - a slang expression for someone who doesn't act rationally and appears slightly mad, sounds good to me.