DISABLED SPACES

We were in town earlier and parked in a retail units area to go into some of the shops there. Outside one of the shops there were five disabled parking spaces. In one was a Mercedes with number plates displaying the name of the company the owner of the car obviously owns. Clearly not a disabled person. The other three spaces were taken with cars, not one of which displayed a disabled sticker.

One space remained. As we went to our car, I saw a car pull up into the space and turned to watch out of curiosity.

The woman driver leapt out of her car followed by two children of about 10 years old. Not one of them vaguely disabled. And not a jot of shame at what she was doing in not only taking up a valuable disabled parking spot but also the example she was setting her children.

Driving to units further down the retail park to go into another shop, we parked and went into the shop. Coming out a woman pushed past us and got into a car parked directly in front of the door. In the diabled parking spot. Not a bother on her, no shame, nothing, and just drove off.

How on earth can these people just pull into these disabled bays and go off and do their shopping without a care for those who might actually need to park nearer the door of the shop/s?

There is no excuse for it. And further, in the retail park we were in, parking in the other spaces would only have involved a few meters walk to any of the stores.

But worst of all today was seeing a person, with a disabled sticker on her car window, and clearly disabled, having to park well away from the first shop I wrote of here and make her way, with difficulty, and through the rain, to the shop in question.

When did people become so selfish?

THIS IS JUST NUTS!

I love nuts.  But of all the nuts I love, I love pistachio nuts best of all.  It is impossible for me to open a bag of them and eat just a few.  Or at leat it was until yesterday.

Yesterday was Saturday and we decided that we would rent a couple of DVDs and have a movie night.  And for movie night as we all know, we need munchies.  In our house our favourite munchies are nuts and chocolate coated raisins.

So DVDs rented we prepared for movie night: roaring fire, drinks (freshly squeezed orange juice with sparkling water), chocolate coated raisins and nuts.  Squeezed the oranges, dropped in the ice cubes to the glasses and added orange juice and fizzy water, popped the chocolate coated raisins into a bowl and then ... disaster ... no nuts!  It seems someone (ahem) had devoured all the pistachios. 

So, being a Saturday evening the only supermarket open in our town was Tesco so husband was duly dispatched to fetch the pistachios.

And we settled in on the sofa, all munchies and drinks arranged beside us plus a spare bowl for the pistachio nuts shells.  Perfect.  Until ...

... I tasted the first pistachio nut which to say the least, was a disappointment.  But these things happen as any pistachio nut lover will confirm and so I persevered and tried another.  As with the first, it was a dried out, hard, tasteless ball of nothingness.

 I tried another.  Same.  And another.  And then gave up, furious that I would now have to watch the film minus my much loved pistachio nuts. 

The chocolate coated raisins somewhat made up for the disappointment and I made a mental note to return the dried out husks to Tesco first thing Monday morning.

Pistachoi nuts

Today, Sunday, my husband was out for the paper and returned clutching not only the newspapers but a bag of pistachios nuts too!  He had been in Lidl and saw them there and thought he would take them home to see how they compared with the Tesco pistachios.  I can report back that the Lidl ones not only look entirely different to the Tesco ones, they actually taste like pistachio nuts!  Imgine being delighted that something tastes like it should?

Lidl nut on left ~ Tesco nut on right

If you look at the photograph above you can clearly see the difference in the two nuts.  There is colour and vibrancy in the Lidl one whereas the Tesco one looks exactly as it tasted, dry and without any life at all.

And then to top it all, the Lidl pistachio nuts are much, much cheaper than the Tesco pistachio nuts ~ slightly over half the price in fact.  The Tesco bag had 200 grams costing €3.79 (.019 per gram) and the Lidl bag 250 grams costing €2.58 (.010 per gram).

You nut lovers have been warned!

NOTE: I have emailed a link to this post to Tesco Ireland asking them for a comment on both the price difference and the distinct lack of quality of their pistachios.  I will add their reply, should I receive one.

UPDATE: I did receive a reply from Tesco who offered to refund my money (provided I had a receipt).  They made no comment about the price or the lack of quality of their product.