I have just returned home from doing my grocery run. It’s hard work; I’m trying not to take public transport so I walk about 30 minutes into the town centre and then lug all my things back for 30 minutes. In between, I make stops at the Asian supermarket to get some specialty items before heading to Fred Hallams (a local independent grocer). I then head into Tesco to get everything else I need.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing my shopping weekly, just to practice physical distancing as I best can. This week, I found that I had enough to last me over 10 days (even the junk food!) so I waited until today to head out.
What a mistake! Beeston, the town centre I usually head to for shopping, was so busy.
I just hope it’s an anomaly as people are navigating reduced hours over the next few days with Easter weekend, and not people just getting tired of staying in. This week, I have noticed that there seemed to be more cars on the road (I work right by my window facing a main road) and there’s definitely been more people out on the streets ‘exercising’ because the weather’s been really lovely.
Myself included, of course.
At any one point today, I noticed that there were queues of about 10 people all along the high street, either waiting to get into supermarkets, butchers, banks or pharmacies. At one point, it was not possible to walk down the street and keep to the advised distance (2 metres) from people because there were queues and just people walking everywhere.
Plus, that person behind me in the queue to get into Tesco just kept coming closer and closer for that 30 minutes we were waiting for!
I can appreciate that cabin fever must surely have hit for some people, but I hope people are still staying in and being as careful as possible. I’d really like to see less people next week when I head out to stock up my fridge again.