Panic buying

[melmerby]

22 hours ago, Paul.Uni said:

DIY store update.

 

Today I was told that the store is reopening on Wednesday. So I had to pick some of the last of the click & collect orders from Saturday. Once the last click & collect orders were picked, we started to making the store look like a store again.

 

Click & collect orders have been turned off for the store. In addition the following won't be available when the store reopens:

• Carpet cleaning machine hire.
• Key cutting.
• Paint mixing.
• Showrooms design services.
• Timber cutting.

I should find out more tomorrow.

Could do with the Garden Centres re-opening so we can get some odds and ends for the garden.

It's all right ordering for home delivery but for a couple of packets of seeds or similar?

Edited April 21, 2020 by melmerby

[Pacific231G]

6 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

An awful long time ago we were at our friend place for a Saturday night dinner party, but the husband was always on his phone, a standing joke even back then....he was a trader, in fuel oils.......this time he was away a bit longer than usual and when he came back he had a huge smile on his face......apparently he had a tanker on its way from South America to UK.......the phone call was to tell him the conflict in the middle east had escalated into a full scale “war” and oil prices had shot up......his tanker full of oil was now worth a helluva lot more than when it left Venezuela.....he got his good champers out that night 

There's a word for people who can only see war (or even "war") as an opportunity for profit and it isn't a polite one. Dead and dying children, wrecked lives, urban deserts, generations of hatred? what 's that when balanced against  "shareholder value". 

 

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

No panic today, not even a queue to get into the supermarket for the weekly shop, just a walk through the 'distancing maze' to acquire a shopping trolley, making access marginally slower than normal.

 

5 hours ago, cctransuk said:

...If it achieves nothing else, I would hope that COVID-19 can sufficiently shake the complacency of the great and good, to achieve a reassessment of how the world's resources are exploited.

 

I'm not holding my breath, though!

Don't hold your breath, nothing will be learned: rampant exploitation will resume in full trash the planet mode, until the world is a burnt out rubbish tip.

[boxbrownie]

23 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

There's a word for people who can only see war (or even "war") as an opportunity for profit and it isn't a polite one. Dead and dying children, wrecked lives, urban deserts, generations of hatred? what 's that when balanced against  "shareholder value". 

 

 

Oh do tell......I’ll pass it on to him 

[melmerby]

I ordered some stuff from Holland & Barrett, late on Tuesday.

Website said orders were taking 15days to fulfill.

Receipt of order said delivery expected between the 6th & 12th May.

Order arrived today!

[Fat Controller]

47 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I ordered some stuff from Holland & Barrett, late on Tuesday.

Website said orders were taking 15days to fulfill.

Receipt of order said delivery expected between the 6th & 12th May.

Order arrived today!

I think a lot of firms are being very conservative with their dates; I hope this is the case with my Wine Society order, as my stocks of Chateau Thames Embankment are getting low.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Fat Controller

[Enterprisingwestern]

7 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

I think a lot of firms are being very conservative with their dates; I hope this is the case with my Wine Society, as my stocks of Chateau Thames Embankment are getting low.

 

I'm in a similar situation with the truffles, pate de foie gras and caviar!

 

Mike.

[MarcD]

On 21/04/2020 at 18:08, melmerby said:

Could do with the Garden Centres re-opening so we can get some odds and ends for the garden.

It's all right ordering for home delivery but for a couple of packets of seeds or similar?

If you have a B&M's near you they have a lot of garden stuff in. Went out and panic bought a 120L of multipurpose compost, 3 5ft bamboo canes, 30L of bird food, a bird feeding station and a packit of sprout seeds (Christmas isn't going to grow its self). 

The only thing they didn't have in in large stocks was veg seed.

Our local garden centre is also doing click and collect so check yours could be doing the same thing.

 

Marc   

[melmerby]

6 minutes ago, Furness Wagon said:

If you have a B&M's near you they have a lot of garden stuff in.

 

Marc   

Unfortunately the only B&M I know is in the centre of Birmingham and that is a bus ride away.

 

 

[MarcD]

Probably not the best in the circumstances.

Marc

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On ‎25‎/‎04‎/‎2020 at 17:10, Fat Controller said:

...my stocks of Chateau Thames Embankment are getting low.

Is that the one with a bouquet favourably compared to a dockyard sex-worker's armpit?

 

Unpanic buying. None of this encouragement about getting the DIY sheds open please. I have managed to delay progress on laying the paving slabs (that we have) for lack of the makings for weak mix, and my presently excellent lower back would like to continue enjoying this interlude. Ideally until I can discreetly employ someone to spare me the labour, once she's safely back in the office: and thus get all the credit for a good end result without the potential discomfort...

[Reorte]

Looks like I might have to be making frequent shop visits regardless - seems that my damned fridge/freezer's decided now's a good time to pack up. Normally it's fairly empty, of course now though the freezer's full.

 

[Gwiwer]

There is no limit on the number of shop visits.  Only advice that you shop "as infrequently as possible".  If that means daily then so be it.  That is what a goodly number of people have been doing.

 

There is also no restriction on making an essential journey by bus if that is the means by which you can reach the required outlet.  And any shop which is open, including DIY / garden places, may sell anything they normally do meaning you are also free to purchase without question.  Despite what one or two individual police officers have suggested and the internet keyboard warriors might think.   

[Reorte]

Fair enough but I'd still prefer to not keep going. Not to mention all the stuff I'll have to throw out. It started up against for a bit, although stuff had started to defrost. Oh well, these things happen, that's life.

 

[Gwiwer]

If anyone needs flour .....

 

..... none seen in these parts for a few weeks. Until a bag of plain arrived with Friday’s Ocado delivery. Then the corner shop had self-raising on Saturday meaning we were restocked

 

 Today I was presented with a bag each of self-raising and bread flour (strong plain) by a work colleague who had thoughtfully picked up on a conversation we had last week 

 

I gratefully brought those home (it seemed rude to refuse) and found SWMBO’s long-standing order for a bag each of plain and self-raising via the internet had also arrived!!!  
 

SWMBO plans a baking day tomorrow.  

Edited April 27, 2020 by Gwiwer

[big jim]

Loads of flour in morrisons last week, big sacks of it and smaller 1kg of bread flour that looks to have been decanted into ‘deli counter’ type bags and being sold for about £1 a bag, my wife bought a few bags of it for her baking 

[Fat Controller]

18 minutes ago, big jim said:

Loads of flour in morrisons last week, big sacks of it and smaller 1kg of bread flour that looks to have been decanted into ‘deli counter’ type bags and being sold for about £1 a bag, my wife bought a few bags of it for her baking 

And therein, the problem; only about 2% of the flour produced in Britain goes to retailers in small bags in normal circumstances; the rest either goes in 25kg sacks to smaller bakeries and restaurants, or by bulk tanker to industrial bakeries. Thus the mills will only carry small stocks of bags for retail, and it will take a while to get new stocks of bags delivered. If you are into baking on a reasonable scale, it might be worth trying to get larger sacks direct from places like Shipton Mill, the Watermill at Little Salkend or Dove's Farm. It's a lot cheaper per kilo; having bagged a few tonnes in my time selling the stuff, I can understand why.

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

And therein, the problem; only about 2% of the flour produced in Britain goes to retailers in small bags in normal circumstances; the rest either goes in 25kg sacks to smaller bakeries and restaurants, or by bulk tanker to industrial bakeries. Thus the mills will only carry small stocks of bags for retail, and it will take a while to get new stocks of bags delivered. If you are into baking on a reasonable scale, it might be worth trying to get larger sacks direct from places like Shipton Mill, the Watermill at Little Salkend or Dove's Farm. It's a lot cheaper per kilo; having bagged a few tonnes in my time selling the stuff, I can understand why.

 

Very few people bake at all, these days. 

[boxbrownie]

12 hours ago, Reorte said:

Looks like I might have to be making frequent shop visits regardless - seems that my damned fridge/freezer's decided now's a good time to pack up. Normally it's fairly empty, of course now though the freezer's full.

 

Wasn’t there a big panic on buying freezers at the start of the lockdown, I seem to remember reports of people buying one or two freezers to fill with food in the garage!

[melmerby]

13 hours ago, Reorte said:

Looks like I might have to be making frequent shop visits regardless - seems that my damned fridge/freezer's decided now's a good time to pack up. Normally it's fairly empty, of course now though the freezer's full.

 

So your the reason mine is half empty because of lack of stuff to put in it.

 

(actually it's at it's lowest for years as a large proportion of what was kept in it is still constantly OOS

[Reorte]

13 minutes ago, melmerby said:

So your the reason mine is half empty because of lack of stuff to put in it.

 

(actually it's at it's lowest for years as a large proportion of what was kept in it is still constantly OOS

I normally eat in the canteen at work during the week. Throw in trying to reduce going to the shops anyway and it had filled up. I also live on my own so when I do cook it's often easiest to do a batch and freeze a lot of it, so there were quite a few cooked frozen meals in there. Since it had all partially defrosted I'm reluctantly considering chucking them.

 

After removing and fiddling with the thermostat it seems to be working again.

[ejstubbs]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Very few people bake at all, these days. 

 

Except that a lot more people have started baking under lockdown: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52212760

 

Quote

Grocery sales of flour were up 92% in the four weeks to 22 March compared to the same period last year

 

Quote

since the coronavirus outbreak...ordinary shoppers have been purchasing much more flour than normal - with existing stocks quickly used up

 

Quote

packing lines are now running at maximum capacity but this is only enough for 15% of households to buy a bag of flour per week - and existing packing lines can't easily be adapted to produce smaller retail bags

 

(Perhaps Mr Dyson could come up with a flour packing machine.)

 

And the profiteers are out on eBay, with people asking (and getting) of the order of £10 for a 1.5kg bag of flour, and the same for a 125g tin of yeast.  For example, this chancer sold 7 bags of Doves Farm wholemeal bread flour for £11.45 each including postage.  That's not just an unused bag they happened to find at the back of the kitchen cupboard.

 

Sainsbury's seems to have given up trying to stock flour and yeast altogether.

 

Patchy availability of fairly basic staples like flour prompts people to go out to the shops more, undermining the lockdown message by giving people an excuse ("it's food, it's essential, innit") to justify leaving home more often.

 

It's also somewhat annoying that the above factors combine to mean that we are now having to eat pappy supermarket bread because we can't source flour and yeast in the fairly modest quantities - no more than a couple of bags of bread flour a week - that we used to be able to buy on a regular basis week in week out.

[Hroth]

Our local Sainsburys has an Argos collection point in it so, requiring an item fro Argos, I elected to collect it there, rather than having to keep an ear open for delivery (and not paying £3.95 for the pleasure).  Anyhow I turned up this morning and was asked by the doorkeeper if I was shopping or collecting from Argos. Having affirmed that I was collecting from Argos, I was then told that I had to buy an item of essential food before I could collect my Argos item, on the grounds that too many people were getting stuff from Argos and no one was buying groceries.....

 

I'm not sure that they are really allowed to apply such a condition, but rather than argue the point, I just bought the cheapest "essential item" I could find.  I suppose I can say that I was still saving £2.75 on the delivery charge... 

 

 

[boxbrownie]

Should have told him you were also going to buy a bottle of hand cleansing gel.........I bet he had loads of those in stock  !

[alastairq]

3 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

Except that a lot more people have started baking under lockdown: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52212760

 

 

 

 

(Perhaps Mr Dyson could come up with a flour packing machine.)

 

And the profiteers are out on eBay, with people asking (and getting) of the order of £10 for a 1.5kg bag of flour, and the same for a 125g tin of yeast.  For example, this chancer sold 7 bags of Doves Farm wholemeal bread flour for £11.45 each including postage.  That's not just an unused bag they happened to find at the back of the kitchen cupboard.

 

Sainsbury's seems to have given up trying to stock flour and yeast altogether.

 

Patchy availability of fairly basic staples like flour prompts people to go out to the shops more, undermining the lockdown message by giving people an excuse ("it's food, it's essential, innit") to justify leaving home more often.

 

It's also somewhat annoying that the above factors combine to mean that we are now having to eat pappy supermarket bread because we can't source flour and yeast in the fairly modest quantities - no more than a couple of bags of bread flour a week - that we used to be able to buy on a regular basis week in week out.

 

There's a big flour mill local to me....that do excellent range of flours.

One or  two local villages have got together to buy sacks of flour[at the door]..which the mill is happy to do...just a few odd restrictions, such as payment, since nearly all their trade is via huge lorries and bulkers...

So, a trip with a decent vehicle, 15 or 20 14 kg sacks of various [there's a price list, available via telephone or email]...and that's a village good for baking for a few months?

Incidentally, the price quoted above is a lot more than that quoted for a 14 kilo bag at our mill...[slightly less than they charge for  14 kilo bag of their finest wholemeal]   ....

Perhaps worth googling for catering wholesalers locally?