Broom soap

I have said before that I'm a great believer in lists, lists of any sort but especially shopping lists.  I don't know what it is about my memory, but if I go to buy four things, I will completely forget one of them.  I don't just forget what the fourth thing is (or was), I completely forget that a fourth item ever existed!  Usually that is not too much of a problem.  Our nearest supermarket is but a mile or so away so it's not a great hassle to make a second trip.

Things are a little different when we are in France, especially if I am buying DIY stuff.  That involves a drive of some 24 miles round trip and I have been known to curse roundly on occasions such as when I forgot the vitally important screws.  I now make out a list before I set off.  Which is fine when I remember to take the list with me, which isn't always the case.

I'm not sure that my brain is really wired just as it should be.  Although I am forever forgetting things I set out to buy, I have no difficulty in remembering people's phone numbers, even a year or more after they have moved and changed their number!  So I need a shopping list to help my memory.

For the last few weeks, it has been me who makes out the shopping lists but before that, She Who Must Be Obeyed gave me the orders of what to buy as I visited the supermarket while she relaxed in the diving bell having her high dosage oxygen treatment.  I quickly learned the need for me to read the list before we set out.  The Old Bat, bless her, would have jotted down things in such a way that she and only she knew what was meant.  For instance, she might have written "oil".  I would need extra information to ensure that I brought back the right sort of oil and in the right quantity.  What really threw me was the time when I had collected all the things on the list - except for one item right at the bottom.

+ r

I stared, perplexed, at this hieroglyphic while shoppers pushed and shoved around me.  What on earth could she mean by "+ r"?  I walked up and down the aisles seeking inspiration from the items on the shelves and suddenly it occurred to me.  That plus sign was really a lower case t and what I was to buy was toilet rolls.

Yesterday afternoon I found myself hoist with my own petard.  I had made out the list myself but quite why I wanted broom soap - or even what broom soap might happen to be - was something I failed to comprehend.  Until I remembered.  Not "broom" buy "b'room" - bathroom soap.

It's all a bit like the old school reports: "Must try harder".