SUNDAY 10 JUNE 2007 - COINING IT IN

A Sunday visit this week - daughter now home from university and my fridge is somewhat short of produce and what there is is lacking in quality (no salad, freshly squeezed orange juice - you know the kind of thing). It's busy and I have to admit that the cool of the fridge area is wonderful after the humid heat of outside. How did we survive without air conditioning? Now, first, I had a reply from Sainsbury's about the asterisks on my cheese sandwich. Again this was in two different type faces with my question repeated back to me in one and the answer in another. I presume that the advisor (or whatever they are called at Sainsbury's) cut and pasted the answer bit from another e-mail or document, hence the two different typefaces. Anyway, the answer is that 'the asterisks are a code that our supplier uses to help them with traceability and in knowing who made the sandwich'. So, somewhere out there is a sandwich maker who supplies someone else who in turn supplies Sainsbury's. Literally a food chain! Clearly there can't be too many cheese sandwich makers otherwise the label would be covered in asterisks - more stars than the Milky Way! So, whoever ** is, well done, I enjoyed it. On the way in I had a go on the Coinstar as I said I would and it is a seriously impressive bit of kit. You chuck all your coins into a tray and it wheezes and clatters as it counts your coins and a little display screen tells you how it's getting on, it lists all the coin denominations and the numbers move up as your coins are counted. It also rejected a couple of Euro coins (20 cents?) that look very similar to our 1p. Great! It took its 7% service charge and out came a ticket for £1.30 for me to use at the checkout. Presumably Coinstar make money out of these machines but they must have to take in a huge amount of coinage to cover the cost of the machine, servicing it, taking out all the coins and banking them and so on. Anyway, good luck to them and I will return! Also on the way in I bought another savings stamp (£2 and counting!) and stuck it on my card when I got home. All completely pointless really but it could be interesting when I cash it in as I suspect it will be a new experience for Tim or whichever cashier I get that week. Reader(s) will remember that I bought some summer offer products a few weeks ago so I could get a free picnic rug (still not used). I have resisted the temptation to get another but noticed this week that the box which houses all the goodies has taken a real beating - clearly this offer is too good to miss and customers are falling over themselves to grab the rugs etc from the box before they all disappear! Nothing much caught my eye as I was going round the store but the checkout delivered for my diary as usual! First, the cashier picked up some of the next customer's stuff by accident and included it on my bill so this resulted in a crediting routine. Second, my Coinstar voucher caused some scratching of heads but it all worked in the end. Maybe I should save up a pile of this kind of thing and ceremoniously present them to a cashier all in one go? If I had enough of them presumably I could end up with a negative bill and get money from Sainsbury's! The ultimate achievement - being paid to do the shopping ... Third (is there no end to this excitement?) the man in front of me asked for help with his packing! Not sure why, he looked able bodied enough and fully aware of his surroundings but, anyway, I was expecting an onrush of orange coated assistants from behind the scenes but alas ... no. All that happened was the cashier picked up a carrier bag and stuffed his shopping into it after it had been swiped. Another illusion shattered! Finally, for this week I jotted down 'card' as I was going round but in the cold light of day I can't for the life of me remember why. Finally, finally, another interestingly described item on my bill this week - wild rocket leaves. An Iranian missile perhaps? And finally, finally, finally I did donate my Active Kids Vouchers to the school down the road and were they grateful? You betcha!

Items bought 27
Cost £38.49 (before my Coinstar voucher)

Average cost per item £1.42

Checkout no 8

Nectar points 1877

Active Kids vouchers 0 (I will delete this bit next week)