Shopping
“Short (up to two-mile) home-to-grocery store suburban car trips (and other activities where items are collected and brought home)”
My Grandma was probably the most ecologically sensitive person I have known. She kept anything and everything that might be reusable, grew her own vegetables, knitted our sweaters and knew her local bus timetable inside out. She also maintained a British cultural icon - a plaid shopping bag on two wheels.
It’s the shopping cart that’s on my mind. I am young enough to feel that a shopping cart would compromise my image as I trip lightly around the neighbourhood, but old enough that carrying bags is doing damage. Delivery is great, but I feel guilty about using it unless I am having a supremely organised week when I can do one big shop. No, until they invent self-levitating grocery bags that follow me home, I obviously need wheels.
The big green toddler wagon is still in the garage. Runs well but not very manouverable and hard to park. And, with a lot of miles on its clock, it makes an awful racket. A newly revamped shopping cart was reviewed in the Sunday Globe and Mail Style section. Bigger wheels, bike-like trim and available at local dealers, but I still feel it might just as well be plaid. Not much capacity either and not quite my style.
The wonderful folks at Home Hardware present a worthy contender: a folding wire cart available in 2 or 4 wheel drive. $20 is excellent value for this equivalent to a wood paneled station wagon and I am very tempted. Perhaps I could customise it: Alloy wheels and a leopard print liner? I know these are the vehicles of choice in Manhattan.
When I can’t find things locally my next step is always online. This takes a while – most off the world’s shopping carts are apparently electronic - but I eventually find a wonderful site about real shopping carts. It includes intelligent discussion of the issues at stake, and many different options, including an undersized but intriguing model with 6 wheels, that might be able to climb the front porch steps. There is also something that looks like an uncomfortable cross between a Laundry Basket and a folding stroller.
But I'm just kidding myself really: I know what I truly want, and eventually I find it. The Rolls-Royce of the urban pavement. Almost extinct, even in England, but still gracious and prohibitively expensive. An elegant willow basket on unobtrusive wheels with a sensuously curved handle. This is what I really want. The price is a problem. It costs around $140 before I even consider how to get it to Canada.
The CBC pointed out this morning that it now costs over $100 to gas up an SUV. Since I don’t own an SUV and our aging Volvo rarely leaves the garage, this argument carries little domestic weight. A company called Tony Basket in China produces a similar, if less decorative, wheeled basket, which would presumably be cheaper. Wonder if I can find a company importing them into Canada. More research needed, but right now I need to go shopping…….
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