Mr Grumpy: Wine & food mis-matching
OPINION: Kingsley Wood, owner of First Glass Wines & Spirits in Takapuna, is a man of habit.
It is a sort of reverse bucket list that includes obvious things, such as opening a bottle of champagne with a saber, and less obvious things like ordering a 27-course meal at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco.
The latest addition is this: “Whenever you are in lockdown don’t on any account attempt to do your online grocery shopping with your significant other”.
It started happily enough. Marion had prepared a grocery list. I logged on to a supermarket website and clicked the online shopping button. It seemed deceptively easy to navigate. Marion is a superb grocery shopper. She can spot a bruised avocado or overripe melon from 30 paces. She’s got a keen eye for “specials” and knows the location of the most obscure grocery items. Those skills are absolutely no use when you are staring at a 14-inch computer screen.
We started with fruit and vegetables. 325 items were displayed 24 at a time. One or two harsh words were exchanged, and the tension rose as we scrolled through the complete list.
Marion refused to buy meat without first inspecting it. I could see the specter of vegetarianism looming but managed to talk her into buying some premium beef mince.
It was a long, hard and very tense slog but we finally filled our virtual shopping basket before discovering that we should have booked a delivery slot before we started. We began again.
It took longer to fill our shopping basket on the second time round but at least we had a delivery slot. All went well until we tried to go to the checkout. Our order had timed out.
