Straight to the Door

More days in covid incarceration beckon, and I have engaged in yet another personal first by ordering a grocery delivery online. Just like my past experiences of joining the kind of modernity everyone else has long since embraced, this feels like something of a defeat and I wish I understood quite why. Dr Abacus says his family find online shopping far more convenient and I suppose it is. In this instance, there may be some reprehensible pride lurking at the bottom of my reaction, as I would rather go and do my own shopping than have someone else do it for me - a minimal sort of independence, which I might be better off shaking free of. But I have no choice at the moment, and I was able to buy some lentil soup which seems to have disappeared off the shelves a long while ago. I can probably be reassured that I won't be making a habit of this because it was a tough job finding enough things to make the minimum shop: a packet of razor blades, which I don't really need yet, got me halfway to the magic £40 in one go. And that felt like cheating.