The Great Shopping Cart Debate
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Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
From The Editor and Friends
The next Morning will be sent on the 12th January 2023.
The Great Shopping Cart Debate
Living in Sweden is an elegant affair. The Swedes themselves are in fact truly elegant!!
Tall, slender, usually blond with Nordic features, all beautifully attired in long coats, tight slim-fit pants and all in - BLACK!!
Their clothes are black, their sleek electric cars are black, their houses are even sometimes black!
My grandson and I play 'spot the coloured car' to pass the time on a long journey, with the exception of taxis, one seldom comes across a car of any colour other than black!!
Now shopping in a mall in the USA or South Africa, is a frolicking affair, one recruits a shopping cart and off one goes. Babies are in the cart, toddlers are in the cart, the cart bulges, nay overflows, with parcels, packets and presents. Grandmas even use the shopping car as a zimmer frame!!
But not in Sweden !! Carts are reserved for supermarkets only, one never sees a shopping cart in an upmarket, glitzy shopping mall!! The beautifully attired shoppers seem to only have one or two monogrammed (recyclable of course) packets. One's shopping bag must not be labeled OK Bazaars, ICA or Pick n'Pay! Good gracious me no!
Only understated Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Apple, and Tiffanys are good packets to carry,( I always keep my Harrods packets to carry my bits and pieces in!!) but then Swedes, I can only assume, must do a lot of trips to and from the parkade to drop their Christmas shopping in the car!!
Shopping carts in Australia are also unlike those that we Africans are familiar with!! HeeHoo and I had a whole cartload of beer and wine for the Big Party recently (the non alcoholic sort of course!!) We were gayly walking out of the mall to deposit the shopping in the car when WHAM !! The cart stopped dead.......nothing would persuade it to move and then we noticed a yellow lock on the wheel! We had walked past the point of no return and a deadlock had activated on the cart to stop us from going any further.
Mortified, we struggled with numerous crates of beer backwards and forwards to the car, feeling like teenagers drinking underage!!
Shopping carts are like wheel barrows in Africa, used for hundreds of reasons ! Carrying water, pushing babies, carrying Dad back from the shebeen on payday!!
Shopping in Zim is much more fun, its quite common to see a family pushing a shopping trolly several miles from the store, when one does not have transport, its the obvious thing to do of course!!
Mind you I am sad to say that few families in Zim these days need a trolly to carry their groceries....a couple of plastic bags will suffice for the lucky ones......
Dear God, please, Bless Zimbabwe at Christmas.
WATCHDOG
Recently Published Early Rhodesian Historical Book
"WG Brown Founder of Shangani Mission Matabeleland 1916" author Frances Hawkins.
486 pages, 224 black and white photos many previously unpublished!
Pioneering Shangani Mission, Stories of travel by ox wagon in virgin bush and camping overnight in bush stockade protection from hyenas, leopards, lions ! Meeting Matabele Queen Losekeyi at her royal Queens Kraal, befriended by Lobengula's son Prince Tshakalisha and Johan Colenbrander to name a few! Learning the ways of the Matabele, and experiences living on the veldt. Having established the Shangani Mission, LMS later moved Brown to develop the mission school at Inyati into a Boys Industrial Institution. Kate Brown's 9-day journey flying on Imperial Airways up Africa to England in 1935. 'Hawkey' Hawkins of BSAP- his stations served, and his establishment of Tjolotjo Police Camp; Living in Nyamandhlovu. Includes the Reminiscences of Charles Quinche - a Bulawayan of Swiss Ndebele parentage.
Good as a Christmas gift.
Hardcover (Signed) $40. Softcover $30.
Contact Frances 0772 341 320 or email hawkinszim@rimelo.com