Nina's Blog - Thursday 7th August 2025

Thursday 7th August 2025, 09:57

Two tasks for today: get toothpaste, book somewhere to stay in Nottingham while my car is being repaired.

But first I think I'll revisit Stoke-on-Trent. Last time I was there was only for one night and I arrived fairly late and left early in the morning. The place didn't click with me, perhaps because it was winter. I stayed at a B&B. That also didn't click. It was one of those full of notices about what one is not to do.

I can't find any record of my visit there, no photographs tagged with the name of the town, no mention in any of my saved SW posts, very odd.

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

Thursday 7th August 2025, 17:18

Got back to my room and after a little while realized that I hade forgotten to get toothpaste. Shouldn't be a problem as the room is just across the road from the grandly named Grad Junction Retail Park. So I strolled over. i ignored Superdrug because I'm utterly fed up with them trying to sell me extras at the till and adding extra steps to payment to try to et me to donate to some charity. At the far end I could see a shop called The Food Warehouse.

This made me think of dinner which will be a repeat of yesterday which was a pork burger with two baked apples and it occurred to me that stuffing the apples with raisins or sultanas would be nice. So I headed for the Food Warehouse. I found some toothpaste and then searched the entire shop for dried fruit without finding any. Not only that but there were no basic ingredients such as flour. So I took my tube of toothpaste and headed to the till only to find that there was only one operating and four groups of people with trolleys, one of which was still piling stuff in. Can't be bothered to wait in the queue for a tube pf tooth paste so I put it back on the shelf and left. About a hundred metres away is a Home Bargains shop so I went there found the same toothpaste 20% cheaper and added a box of Dove soaps because I dislike shower gel. Had a quick look around to see if they had any dried fruit but didn't see any; but that's quite reasonable as it's not primarily a food shop.

It's no wonder so many people in the UK are so huge, it's difficult to find ingredients to use in one's own cooking even if you try.

In even the smallest Norwegian supermarket (even big ones are usually smaller than The Food Warehouse) I can find at least half a dozen different kinds of flour: wheat, rye, barley, wholemeal (usually both fine and coarse ground), usually some gluten free, as well as Italian tipo 00 for pizza, And of course dried raisins, prunes, apricots; it's rare to find sultanas though and currents are regarded as seasonal for Christmas baking.