When the chips are down...

I'm typing this one from the comfort of my old bed, in my old room, at my old pal and former flatmate Anna's house, where I was forced to set up emergency camp last night after those boys at Royal Derby Hospital did unspeakable things to my hip joint yesterday morning (see previous blog).

So I'm going to start this blog by saying aren't friends wonderful? I was conveyed to Anna's house last night by my knight in shining Vauxhall Corsa (Tel pool car) Joey, one of our wonderful reporters, who admittedly had got his money's worth of entertainment after spending the entire evening in the newsroom telling me I was walking like an extra from a zombie movie.

And then Super Anna took over. Within 15 minutes I'd been helped into a pair of trackie bottoms and fleecie top, I'd got a cuppa on my lap and a slightly strange programme which seemed to involve a lot of bears mating was on the box (which apparently Anna had been looking forward to watching all evening). At one point I went up to the loo (quite a long process at the moment) and came back downstairs to find what appeared to be an identical romantic scene to the one I'd left 10 minutes previously.

"Wow, are they still at it?" I asked.

"Nope, this is a different pair," came the reply.

Unfortunately the leg pain hasn't done much to improve my insomnia, which brings me neatly round to my year without supermarkets. There's always a link - no matter how tenuous!

Because when you shop local, what you actually find is that your circle of friends grows too.

When you're at the check- out in Tesco, you're either dealing with a self-service machine (and those things are never friendly) or you've got twenty different cashiers to choose from and you've never seen any of them before in your life.

Whereas when you're in your local butcher, pet shop or greengrocer, you're dealing with people you know by name and have grown to like.

Case in point: this week alone I've been met with a bevvy of supportive suggestions from my local shopkeeper pals who've been reading this blog and know I can't sleep.

The staff at the wonderful Soundbites vegan and wholefood shop in Derby have suggested everything from camomile tea (can I put whisky in that?) to a hot bath and half a banana before bed.

Others have delved into my reading choices, suggesting that the tedium of Bronte's Villette (yep, still battling on with that) might be stopping me from relaxing. And they probably have a point.

And of course my friends at Baked, the amazing bakery in Derby, are simply saying "welcome to our world" because they get up at 2am anyway to make all their brilliant bread. Quite frankly I don't know how they do it.

So the point I'm making is that when the chips are down people rally round, and I've got a much wider circle of concerned and helpful people since starting the supermarket-free challenge.

Although I will admit, when you can't walk far the Tesco delivery van does start to look like a tempting option too!