Mr R’s shopping list comprised of 12 items. Having received his shopping list the evening before the mission I decided to gather all his shopping on my way home from work. I had half an hour to spare before closing time and with the rain still coming down, I thought this would mean there would be less people out and about and therefore less chance of a queue…I know, very un-British to dislike a good old orderly queue!

Much to my delight, my assumptions were correct, and I walked straight into Sainsbury’s and began working my way through Mr R’s list. Clearly a keen tea drinker I picked up the packet of 240 Tetley’s tea bags and 2 litres of long life semi-skimmed milk. I worked my way through the bakery section for the brioche burger buns and ‘thick’ wholemeal bread, next up was the condiments of beef gravy granules and pepper, then it was back up through the meat section for the beef mince. Last up was the fruit and vegetables section, for the potatoes, tomatoes and iceberg lettuce.

However, much like the tins of baked beans, there was no iceberg lettuce to be found! With the clock ticking closer to the 10pm supermarket closing times I hot footed it over to the self-service checkout to pay for the 10 items I had sourced. I quickly packed all the items into two shopping bags and dashed off towards Asda as I didn’t want Mr R to be missing any items from his list.

It took a little pleading with the Asda security men to let me, but once I was in, in true supermarket sweep style I began dashing around the store to find the 2 elusive items for Mr R, an iceberg lettuce and 3 tins of baked beans. Success! And in record time of about 2 minutes I was in and out, and on my walk home with all the items on Mr R’s list; and the added bonus of an arm workout on the walk home, with the 2.5kg bag of potatoes and long life milk providing some hefty weight to both bags!

The following morning I donned by GG tee, grabbed the two bags of shopping and headed off towards Mr R’s. Adhering to social distancing guidelines, I placed down the bags of shopping along with an envelope containing Mr R’s change, in the corridor, while he placed down the money for all his shopping. He was very grateful and thanked me for obtaining all the items of shopping to enable him to remain safe and isolated.

With the bags of shopping dropped off, I headed up Kentish Town Road on my short walk to work from Mr R's, with my arms now considerably lighter!