WELSH MADNESS AND BABY BOOMING

I am besieged by official letters telling me to ‘ACT NOW!” Usually in capitals to increase the urgency and sometimes in very large envelopes - I suppose to make them seem more important. One weighed so much that I fear the spine of poor Annie, our ever cheerful post-lady, will be lop-sided ever after. Despite this she still smiled as she handed over my census form.

Incidentally, have you noticed how the majority of postmen (both male and female) are happy? Considering their lot - out in all weathers, carrying heavy loads, working to deadlines, awful management, poor pay - you’d think they'd be all as miserable as sin and only stay in the job a couple of weeks before exclaiming ‘blow this for a game of soldiers.’ But no, they go on and on. Smiling like the sun, even in the rain, and always ready to offer up those little courtesies that make life bearable.

Of course they complain - but they do so happily. Very few are sour and po-faced. So what is it about the postman’s lot? They are all very fit and I suppose that helps and seeing the rest of the world at seven o’clock in the morning must give you a comforting feeling of moral superiority.

But back to ‘ACT NOW.’ The heavyweight census form came in separate booklets in English and Welsh. Now I have nothing against the Welsh language. I even spent two years learning some of it at evening classes and I once played the Wicked Witch of the West in a performance of Snow White in some learners’ pantomime. I can still sing ‘Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go’ in Welsh (Hi Ho, Hi He, I ffordd y’r gwaith a’r ni). I have given a Welsh culture class at a school in Norway and had the students performing in Welsh and acting out a version of that great rugby song, ‘Sospan Fach.’ (Which means - and not everyone even in Wales knows this - ‘Small Saucepan’)

So I am not, you see, anti-Welsh. I have done my bit for the language. But I am certainly not up to completing my census in Welsh. Or any other form for that matter.

I shudder to think what it costs to send a Welsh Language census form to the ninety per cent of the population (and probably more) who will choose to respond in English. For many Welsh speakers will still choose to use the English version. More than two and a half million twenty-page booklets will go straight in the bin. All in the name of political correctness. The cost of translation into Welsh is appreciable and the cost of printing in Welsh is also elevated because most printers do not speak the language. But this is what the Welsh Language Act decrees.

It is madness. Why can we not opt how we wish to receive our government communications? When I go to a cashpoint the machine asks me, thoughtfully, in which language it should address me. Besides English and Welsh it offers other choices: French for instance, or German. So why not the government?

It would be a simple matter to register a preference. It could be done at the same time as the electoral register update? “Do you wish us to communicate with your household in: English only, Welsh only, or English and Welsh?” And we could tick the appropriate box. If there was doubt then the default position would be English and Welsh.

Still, now that I come to think of it, we might then demand another choice entirely. We might demand a form in English, properly thought through, and not in some form of hurry-up officialese.

For instance, seeing the words ‘ACT NOW’ you could be excused for filling in the form then and there and posting it off. Instead the small print says to complete the form on 28th March. But even acting on 28th March is wrong because the forms asks for details of people staying overnight on 28th March. Which means (because you never know who might turn up on your doorstep at two minutes to midnight, do you?) that it is impossible to complete the form accurately until 29th March.

Sometimes I’m glad I’m a baby-boomer and therefore on my way out. Responding to other requests to ‘ACT NOW,’ I claimed two pensions this week, one from the government (another binned booklet in Welsh) and one from a provider of ‘financial services.’ Or in my case disservices. Had I only listened to my inner self and put the money under my mattress I’m sure I couldn’t have done worse. Still I have ordered a small annuity and had it indexed. If now I can only manage to live until I'm 120 I feel sure I can extract my revenge.

SOLAR SYSTEMS

The boy called at my house, rang the bell, it must have been about half past four and I was busy. “Yes?” I said, in what I hoped was an unfriendly tone. He took a pace back and almost fell over the doorstep, but then gathering his courage he went into his sales patter. About solar panels, this time. I relaxed. eco-freak that I am.

Eventually I said he could send someone round to ‘assess’ my house though I warned him that I really didn’t have a spare £10,000 and while I appreciated the government’s guarantee of a premium rate for electricity sold back to the grid for the next 25 years, I didn’t think I could wait seven long years until the scheme had paid for itself. “We can provide finance,” he said hopefully. “For nothing?” I asked. “No,” he said. Anyway, someone would ring. I went back to work.

In due course Wesley rang. From a mobile. Twice. I said having thought about the matter over the weekend I really didn’t think there was any chance of my proceeding, finance or no finance, unless they could offer me a deal that was financially neutral, that is to say wouldn’t cost me anything. Could he? No!

But gosh Wesley was persistent, claiming that I would be earning £1,700 a year from my investment. Or something. “There’s another problem,” I said: we live in a conservation area. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“It is not enough to think,” I said, delighted at last to have gained the upper hand, “one has to know - otherwise the planners will have you pulling the whole lot down again.” I suggested that he first called the planners and then called me back again when he had done that, if he was determined to persist in his vain quest.

While he was thinking of his next gambit, I said ‘goodbye’ and put the phone down. Thus far he hasn’t rung back. Neither Wesley, who called from a mobile, nor his doorstep friend told me the name of the establishment for whom they worked. Or if they did, not so that I remembered it. No cards, no leaflets.

I mentioned all this to a friend who is a heating engineer and who suggested that solar panels shouldn’t cost me more than about £3,000. I’m not sure whether this includes connection to the National Grid and the various boxes of electronic tricks that I suppose are necessary.

Still, I should indeed love to have a solar powered house. Moreover, I have a roof that is large and sloping and faces south-east. Ideal, I would have thought, for any number of panels, provided the conservation planners would allow it. As the panels would be at the back rather then the front of the house, there seems little reason for them to be difficult.

I wonder why the government won’t lend me the money on a kind of interest-free ‘student-loan’ basis? After all it is clearly in the government’s interest for us to have solar-powered homes. The work would create jobs and would save having to import gas or coal to burn in our power stations. The government might have to borrow funds, but the saving would more than pay for the interest. It is a ready bankable proposition; if the government were more entrepreneurial it would realise this.

There is a great difference between a £1 billion borrowed to pay for, say the NHS and £1 billion borrowed to finance solar panels which would give a return of perhaps £50 million. The borrowing wouldn’t cost more than £40 million leaving a £10 million profit for each £1 billion of expenditure and perhaps 3,000 jobs created in installation alone. I offer this wizard wheeze free to our dear leaders C and C, which now that I think of it used to be the name of a cordial company - Cantrell and Cochrane, I believe. Sounds,, rather more solid than Cameron and Clegg, if you ask me. They competed with Kia-Ora, if I remember rightly, which phrase is Maori, for good health, or so it said on my bottle of orange juice!

Anyway, we shall battle on without solar power for the moment. But the sun is shining, pushing up both grass and daisies on my lawn and the lawn in front of of little theatre, both of which I have to cut this afternoon. Our play, ‘The Benefactors’ by Michael Frayn, in which I have some sort of starring role, starts next Thursday and we have to put the premises into order. I shall practice my lines as I mow up and down. I have 261 speeches in total. Enough for an afternoon’s mowing, anyway. What do you think?

ON REACHING 100

Ivy Kennard turned 100 this week. She’s a dear old soul, frail now, of course, and practically deaf, but still alert and enjoying life. She looks good for another 100; certainly she is fitter now than a year ago.

We first met her and her family almost thirty years ago. She lived in London then, by herself too, her husband having died another thirty years before, but she came down to Wales regularly to visit her son and daughter-in-law and her three grandsons who were then growing up in the village where we lived. I used to take the middle son on Sunday mornings to the dry ski slope; he is now a bigwig with Microsoft, somewhere in deepest Asia, and goes proper skiing in the mountains of Japan. He made a point of thanking me for those early lessons long ago, which made me feel even warmer than Ivy’s birthday champagne.

She had her card from the Queen, of course. It featured a large head-and-shoulders of the monarch, looking rather cross, as though a minion had dragged her out of bed, dolled her up and made her pose. Though the mouth half-smiled, the eyes looked livid. Or so I thought, but then I have a vivid imagination.

What I do feel though, and here I am not being facetious, is that our dear monarch should wear her crown more. Not some great coronation object, but something like the tin circlet that kings wore over their helmets during the Wars of the Roses. Made of brass probably. At least you could see who was boss.

Now that her hair is almost white and her bearing sadly no longer regal, I feel the Queen needs the visible trappings of monarchy to reinforce who she is. And so a crown, and possibly a sash too and one of those gold and silver starbursts that monarchs and high admirals used to wear could be both handy and useful. Does it matter if she looks Ruritanian? That’s what monarchy is all about if you ask me: trappings. I like my kings in epaulettes. The satirists have taken all the fun out of life. Ivy thought so too in between sips of orange juice.

More seriously, were I Queen I should issue an edict, on pain of the crime of lèse-majesté, to the effect that only I could send cards to centenarians. For poor old Queenie (as my French neighbour calls her) had to jostle on Ivy’s mantelpiece with cards from Carwyn Jones (First Minister of the Welsh Assembly Government) and Ian Duncan Smith (Secretary of State for Work and Pensions).

Now the Queen may genuinely rejoice that one of her subjects has reached her three score and forty - and so too may Carwyn Jones. But IDS must surely be rueing the fact that people are living so long and that his department has been saddled with paying at least fifteen more years old age pension than his actuaries had allowed for; and not only that but with an unlimited liability in respect of the years to come. Maybe his card should be tested for hidden poison!



Still 100 years is a very great age. We were going into lunch when I said to Glenys who happened to be next to me and who is about my age or younger: “Ah well, Glenys, in another thirty years we shall be getting our cards from the Queen and eating our centenarian cake.” But instead of agreeing, she looked at me quite shocked.

I wondered for a moment if she had been diagnosed with some horrible illness and was about to drop dead, but no, what she said was: “I’m not that old!” She said it quite coldly, too.

And then I made the mental calculation: yes, 100 less mid-sixties is a bit more than 30. “Do I look like I’m seventy?” she added in an accusing tone.

Oh dear! I had obviously fallen into a deep pit of my own making, made worse by the fact that she had taken care to look smart and elegant for Ivy’s birthday bash.

What had happened was that I hadn’t calculated at all; I had just taken a chunk of time - 30 years - and assumed that it would be sufficient to carry us all long past our sell-by dates. Try guessing how far Penzance is from Bristol; now add a bit for good measure and you will still probably have underestimated how long England’s south-west peninsula really is. I guessed that’s all.

But I’m not sure Glenys believed me. I tried another tack. Pinned up on the wall, picked out in silver letters, was the word ‘CONGRATULATIONS.’ How many letters, Glenys, I asked quickly, are there in the word ‘Congratulations.’ A quick guess. ’11’ she answered. I was saved.

I BUY EROTICA

One of the glorious things about writing is that moment when you start and the page in front of you is blank. I think all writers experience this feeling, so I am not saying anything new. I am feeling it now. At least I was feeling it a moment ago because now the page is already defiled with this initial clutter of words. Moreover, the happy, go-anywhere feeling of the empty page has become a gnawing worry that this introduction may not be going anywhere and that I may have to start again.

The woman above, a respected French writer whose name I regret to say is lost in the mists of time, was voicing just that sentiment when I copied her picture. She is writing longhand and it is in longhand that the pleasure is greatest. You can’t doodle with a computer, can you? A fountain pen, some nicely woven paper, peace quiet. Even Alan Clark says so in his Diaries. I don’t think I posses a fountain pen anymore, though I can still lay my hands on a bottle of Quink.

Mention of Alan Clark reminds me of Edwina Currie, who was on the radio this morning explaining why she resigned as Health Minister after telling us that we were doomed and not to eat eggs. The discussion had something to do with universities accepting donations from Libya and other undemocratic states. When universities are seeking alliances with China left, right and centre, the current Libyan shock-horror seems false. China is just so big that we tend to pretend it is what it isn’t; though what it has to do with Mrs Currie and eggs, I’m not clear.

Nevertheless, salmonella may be coming home to roost, as it were, for Elder Daughter has announced her intention to keep chickens. Three birds, producers of brown, speckled eggs, plus designer hen coop, are due to be delivered in a few days. Elder Daughter’s husband will turn 40 at about the same time and I can’t help thinking the two events are connected. Middle age should be renamed the Poultry Period.

Otherwise it has been a thin week and I have been reduced to clearing out the drinks cupboard to keep boredom at bay. In its recesses lay all kinds of interesting bottles; I have no recollection whence they came. First up was a bottle of blackcurrant cordial which had jellified: nothing would even come out of it. Not a good start, but then I found some rum; perhaps bought for a cake, so I thought I’d have a Cuba Libré just to see whether it was still good. It was, so I had another, this time with an elderly ginger ale. It tasted foul and I needed a glass of from the encrusted Bailey’s bottle to wash away the taste.

An almost full bottle of Turkish Raki - 50 per cent proof - with a German label - also seemed to be drinkable, (however, did I acquire that?) but the trouble with these aniseed spirits is that they only work in hot and dusty places and in full sunshine. You just can’t drink it on a cold, damp evening in Wales.

Most of the bottles I threw out. All evidence of the ravages of time, which young Kitty, who acts from time to time with us in CADS, has yet to encounter. She dropped by the other day, fresh from Miami of all places, where she had been attending a springtime antiques fair with her mother. This was being held in some great Florida mall, so large that the organisers provided electric buggies so that persons, with limited mobility or just plain lazy, could get themselves around the stalls.

One older woman, ugly, gross and decrepit according to Kitty, was riding imperiously up and down the aisles on one of these things. She would have been unmissable even if she hadn’t been wearing around her grizzled neck a large sign reading ‘I Buy Erotica.’

For some reason I now can’t get this image of the large and decrepit erotica-buying lady astride an electric buggy out of my mind. But then, now that I come to think of it, sadly very little connected with erotica is actually erotic.

Meanwhile, spring has come here too. I know this because we had a referendum and I saw my first lambs this week and tame they were too on the other side of the fence. Like many animals they seem to respond best to clicking noises made with the tongue against the roof of the mouth. It seems to reassure them. But to their defiant mothers (who I imagined facetiously with a sign saying ‘I buy Erotica’ hung round their necks) I bleat. Maaair...Maaair! This works better, I find than Baa - which, followed by 'humbug,'is what I wanted to say in the polling station.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

I was having a discussion this week with an old friend from University about what constitutes success or failure in life. Both of us are on the point of retiring and this seems an opportune moment to take stock. I have just totted up the many occupations I have followed since leaving my Alma Mater: I have been variously a driver, an occupational psychologist, a civil servant, a writer, a property developer, an insurance salesman, an executive search consultant, a business planning adviser, a grants consultant, an editor, a European ‘expert,’ a seller of labels and the UK representative on a joint project between the European and the European Parliament. Thirteen different occupations that have all at various times helped me to pay the mortgage.

To these I need to add those distractions which have also occupied me without the benefit of pay. The chief of these is, or was, politics to which I became addicted at an early age. Yet I have also been an unpaid impresario, an archeologist, done voluntary work for a UN agency and I still am an amateur actor of which more in a moment.

The list is so long that when I write it down I am amazed that I have managed actually to do anything at all in the past forty years. If there ever was a scout’s badge for ‘Jack of All Trades,’ I think I must have long ago qualified for it. My threshold for boredom is obviously low, for I can’t remember ever being sacked.

What worries me is that this rich vein of experience looks like drying up unless the children carry out their threat and despatch me to a retirement home in Bulgaria. For some reason they think this would be some sort of punishment for refusing to grow old gracefully, but I think, if they could afford it, I would go. I rather like the thought of a Black Sea resort somewhere and having to learn a new language. I could perhaps also learn to sail and the Bulgarians are notoriously hospitable with their plum brandy.

Sri Lanka is another place to which I wouldn’t mind being despatched. If I sold up here I could afford a palace in the hills there with a stream through the broad grounds, an over- and an under-gardener, (the latter doubling as a butler), a cook and someone generally to run the house, which I might call Downtown Abbey. Despite the recent wars Sri Lanka is still run by Buddhists and is therefore broadly civilised. It is most beautiful too.

Both would open a new rich tap of experience but there’s not much chance of that at the moment as I am far too useful it seems looking after Theo, who interrupted this piece of writing while his mother was washing her hair, by climbing on to my knee and watching Queen videos on You Tube until he fell asleep.

He is still just turned two but yesterday he kicked a football on the volley, which I thought a very great achievement in co-ordination in someone so young and this morning (as he or his mother had managed to mislay both his socks and his shoes and he was bruising his toes) I was showing him how to kick a ball with the side of his foot to which he cottoned on quickly. And in case the child protection officers should be reading, we were playing in the house on the carpet!

But back to acting: last Saturday I was pressed into lumbering service for a ‘Murder Mystery’ evening, put on by our local Rotary Club. Together with five other members of CADS we sang not only for our supper but for everyone else's too. The audience had to guess which of us had killed a butler possessed of both criminal and amorous tendencies.

You’ll have to guess which part I played but we were an eclectic and unlikely bunch. Led by the great detective, Inspector Sherlock McClue, we included in our ranks an MP, a flapper, a society thief, a big game hunter, a nun and a French woman no better than she ought to be. We scattered clues and red herrings like confetti; somehow the great and good men and women of Rotary were supposed to guess who’d done it. They’d a one in six chance of being right.

We threw our hearts into it. Amateur became hamateur. Still, we learned later that the evening had raised the grand sum of £1,328 for local charities. This included a copious sum for the wine we had to buy at extortionate prices to fuel our performance. It was the only way to make sure we got through the hour and a half. The butler, though, had his revenge. I’ve had dyspepsia all week.

LOVES OF A TWO YEAR OLD: FOOTBALL AND POSTING

Singing, I have just concluded, makes you happy even if you are someone, like me, who has no talent for singing whatsoever; I merely make a noise. That being the case I have a limited number of options for indulging my absence of talent but undoubtedly the best one is when I am walking down the road with two-year old Theo on my shoulders, returning, as we were this morning, from making the daily purchase of milk and periodicals.

Sometimes we sing the same song, Theo and I; but Theo’s repertoire is limited. He knows the first verse of ‘Old MacDonald’ and can turn in a fine rendition of the Grand Old Duke of York - although that sounds a bit like Italian opera as he has yet to understand what any of the words mean, Grand Dukes and York not figuring prominently in his nursery discourse. At other times I sing and he hums along behind and both of us are - in the expression of my nineteenth century-born great aunt, ‘as happy as sandboys.’

But what is (or was) a ‘sandboy’ and why should sandboys be happy? I’ve never had occasion to think about it before; possibly because I’ve never written the words before, so here’s what Brewer says on the subject:

‘An old established expression from the days when sandboys (or men) drove their donkeys through the streets hawking bags of sand usually obtained from beaches. The sand was used by people for their gardens and by builders and publicans for sanding their floors. the happiness of sandboys was due to their habit of indulging in liquor with their takings.'

As an explanation this seems to me to have more holes than a rusty colander. In the first place, I doubt you could carry much sand on a donkey; Secondly, beach sand would be no use in gardens or for mixing in cement, and what about all those pubs more than a mile or two from sandy beaches? Not everything you read in books should be trusted.

But now that I come to think of it, neither should Theo. For when he’s not singing, Theo has two other great loves: football and posting. We stand at opposite ends of the long downstairs corridor, hoofing a football between us and yesterday we discovered an even better corridor in the walled lane that runs beside the local play area. Even at two Theo can kick a ball with length and direction; I can merely kick it with length, so the ball ricochets back and forth down the lane. When it reaches him he whumps it back like an arrow. I wonder if I could get him a trial for Arsenal?

He’s not quite as good at posting. He has yet to understand that not every oubliette offers the same facilities as a letterbox. Yesterday, things suddenly went quiet for a while, always an ominous sign; then we heard repeated attempts to flush the loo. Perhaps he had finally made the profound connection between messy nappies and a preventive period of contemplation with trousers around ankles. Hopes rose.

I peered hopefully into the watery depths: a soggy mass awaited. Luck alone had prevented the day’s label invoices, all enveloped and awaiting stamping, being despatched to the sewage works. I fished them sadly out; yet I couldn't help wondering whether it would be possible to retrieve a message on the other side of the world that had been flushed down a loo; suitably protected, of course?

Having recovered from this minor calamity we set off into the cold wet afternoon hoping to have more luck at the actual Post Office, which here is embedded in our Spar supermarket. For speed I had plonked him in his buggy. I’ve done this before, yet how quickly one forgets the vast amount of space taken by grandparent and pushchair as ensemble, and how small the aisles. Turning round becomes a manoeuvre to be executed with care and trepidation. Ankles loom everywhere, like land mines.

Now this Spar thoughtfully provides a stack of small trolleys for children. Theo caught sight of them and was off immediately. ‘Oh dear,’ I said to myself using one of his own favourite expressions, for this was not a Good Idea. Now I was the supervisor of two independent wheeled vehicles in a crowded supermarket, one of which was being driven at the speed of a future football winger across the store, while the other had become stuck fast between the jam and the baked beans. I felt I needed public liability insurance with a significant number of noughts.

Eventually by an undignified snatch at the hood of his coat, the rampaging trolley was brought up short. I abandoned the buggy and made a dash for the checkout and then all suddenly became well. No catastrophe. Theo even wheeled his trolley back calmly to the trolley stack. He posted our letters, we retrieved the buggy and rode home. I think we even sang the Grand Old Duke of York with embellishments and trills!

LIFTING OF THE SPIRITS

I am a fan of the Spectator magazine; nevertheless, my subscription fell victim to my own scythe of expenditure cuts as, with the business in the early summer doldrums of the election and the World Cup, I felt a cold need to economise.

The business has picked up somewhat since, thank heaven, and I knew I was beginning to miss the Friday morning thump of magazine on doormat when a charming man rang me out of the blue one day just after Christmas. “We’d like you back,” he said enigmatically.

Turned out he was from the Spectator’s subscription department and he promised me an offer that I couldn’t refuse if I would only proffer my card details and sign on again there and then. A year’s supply of the magazine at a bargain basement price.

“Are you sure you are who you say you are?” I asked, remembering the form of words that a customs official had used when I had tried to return to Britain from Ireland without a passport in the mistaken belief that identity wasn’t needed in those halcyon days of long ago. That situation eventually resolved itself when I found in an inner crevice of my wallet a shotgun certificate, which apparently was enough to prove my case. I suppose he thought you couldn’t make up something like that. The two labradors packed into the back of the shaky MGB must have driven out any other suspicions. Illegal immigrants don’t travel with labradors, do they? Well, maybe they should.

Still, now the boot was on the other foot. My man on the telephone - with a pleasant voice that sounded as if it might not be unfamiliar with the company of labradors - told me he knew my customer number, though as that could have been anything it didn’t get us very far. It is not a piece of information I pin to the noticeboard above my desk which is my store of easy reference.

I suggested he gave me a number and I rang him back - but by that stage I was convinced of his bona fides. In fact I would have given my card details to anyone possessed of such a knowledge of the Spectator’s book reviews and Low Life Column to which (having once played the great Jeffrey Bernard who wrote the column for a matter of decades) I am most particularly attached. I reached for my wallet.

The first delivery would be in a couple of weeks, he said. “Fine,” I replied. “I can wait.” I began to look forward again to the friendly Friday morning thud.

But then nothing happened. My account wasn’t debited and no Spectator arrived. The weeks went by; I even received a letter in the post asking me to subscribe to yet another offer this time with the inducement of a half bottle of champagne if I did so.

I had almost forgotten the episode altogether when yesterday there it was, on the doormat.

So this morning I was sitting at the kitchen table in my dressing gown leafing through the articles over my yogurt and reading a particularly sad chapter in Jeremy Clarke’s Low Life column when the door bell rang. Early, I thought for salesmen; and I wasn't expecting a delivery.

The postman carried two long box parcels - both identical, both addressed to me. The word ‘Vineyard’ figured prominently on the label; a clue to their contents. I opened one to find a half bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne. “Thank you for waiting, it’s good to have you back,” was what I imagined the message to say.

My heart leapt. I have a child’s delight in being appreciated.

***************

And my spirits do need restoration. Last evening in the drama club to which I devote far too much time I sad huddled up and morose, not speaking to anyone, like a child in a sulk. No one had done anything to offend me - it was just the black dog, which descends whenever I have to learn a big part for a play. Every time. At first you start finding other reasons for feeling down - a cold coming on, worries about finances, a row with someone. But I know the true culprit is line learning. I face a fine judgment whether to plough on and risk more depression, or to take a week off (for the effect is cumulative) before starting again.

Eventually I perked up and enjoyed a conversation about wine with someone who sells the stuff for a living and whose knowledge appeared encyclopaedic. He recommended several but sadly my battered brain this morning can remember only one and this because the name ‘Carmanière,’ is similar to ‘Carmagnole’ - a French Revolutionary ‘dance' and song that I sung once. It is a fine red and comes from Chile. I wonder if they sell it in Waitrose?