Shopping and Lists

Subtitle: This Could Possibly Be Two Blogs.


Lists have always fascinated me. I used to spend a fair amount of time in grade school compiling lists of favorite things ranging from pop stars to Friday night venues. A history teacher once suggested it might be worthwhile to make lists of favorite dictators or statesmen but this idea never appealed and my list making days came to an end. I don't even write shopping lists anymore because I keep forgetting them or I forget my glasses and then I can not read the list anyway.


I once started a book in which the plot hung around the old lists found scattered around the home of a dead old woman. Her estranged relatives were going to piece together her life as they read the lists hanging on the fridge door or by the phone or screwed up at the bottom of old handbags. I never really got past the first chapter as I could not decide whether these lists were going to disclose a tragic love affair (think Bridges of Madison County) or whether they were going to form sets of instructions to develop Good Housekeeping skills (think Mrs. Beeton or Diary of an Edwardian Lady).


The last list I wrote, or rather it was written for me, was designed to ensure that a trip to buy a big rock for the garden was successful first time around. As the name suggests big rocks are heavy. They have to be delivered and placed by large pieces of machinery. If you don't like the big rock you first choose returning it to the shop could be a nightmare

Two years ago we decided to have a little landscaping done. A little very quickly became a lot. What started out as few more feet of grass and a blossom tree or two developed into a woodland path, stepping stones, a tasteful statue and two big rocks. It was my job to purchase the big rocks that would be placed just to the right of the entrance to the woodland path. I had never really thought much about the big slabs of stone that people had in their gardens. They made lovely features but I had rather assumed that they were just somehow there left over from creation days. I learnt quickly that this was not often the case and I could go shopping for rocks at a lovely nursery just up the road from our house. Armed with my list telling me that I needed two rocks weighing no more than 5 tons, a credit card and wearing comfortable shoes I set out to shop.

The people at the nursery were very helpful and directed me to a field at the back where I could see row after row of these big rocks. These had not been left there by the ice age but arranged in groups depending on size, color and flat bits. Each had a label that told you how much it weighed. The price could be calculated by doing some very hard multiplication sums.

I wandered up and down, down and up becoming more indecisive as I went. Who would have imagined that all those people with beautiful rocks in their gardens had come shopping like this wearing comfortable shoes and been able to reach a decision. I kept coming across what I thought was a good one only to loose it when I came back to give it the final once-over.

Eventually, the owner of the garden center came up with a helpful solution:- He lent me a piece of chalk and suggested I mark each one I liked I was then able to narrow my search down and then finally watch as two beautiful big stones were loaded onto a lorry and placed at the entrance to my woodland path. As I look at them now it would appear that they were left behind by a glacier millions of years ago.

The final note on big rocks......... I asked the owner of the nursery where all the rocks had come from, he explained that they were locally "grown" and that contractors had cleared them from lots as they built new houses and created new gardens. Do you think my rocks look so good because they had been placed exactly where the glacier had left them all those years ago?