It's that time of year again - early September, the leaves are just about to start turning brown, there is a slight chilly breeze, the nights are arriving a little earlier, but the summer wardrobe is still very much in place and people are still sitting in the sunshine outside restaurants and cafes around town.
In other words - it's time to start stocking the Christmas chocolates in Aldi!
In 'Aldi World' they just skip all that rubbishy in-between bollocks the rest of us call 'Autumn' and march straight into Christmas.
So now I have to walk past the stacks and stacks of marzipan potatoes, chocolate covered almonds, domino biscuits, vanilla kipferl, gingerbread balls and hundreds upon hundreds of double chocolate covered dingsbums I don't even know the names of, whenever I go shopping.
Some people may be able to stash their Christmas goodies somewhere in homes, from September, until they're needed in December, but I can't.
People like me don't 'keep' chocolate in a cupboard. They eat it straight from the shopping bag.
So, Aldi can you maybe just *hide* all that Christmas chocolate heavenliness when I walk in the shop? You're retail geniuses, create some kind of holographic shield that flashes into place when I walk past and shows me plastic plants, or power tools, and then remove it for the stashers of this world. Otherwise I am doomed. I walk in thinking "I can do it. This year I'll stash it all in the loft, where I'm too sacred of the 2ft gap between the end of the ladder and the loft floor to go get it". Then I'll come home and think, "Sod it, I'll eat it all now because if I put it in the loft it'll go mouldy and stink because I'm too sacred of the 2ft gap between the end of the ladder and the loft floor."
Why, you ask, the pressure to buy it now? Because in December, when I 'kind of' need this stuff, they'll be selling beach bags and towells, or will be having a Spanish week with speciality olive oil and spicy sausages. Apparently no one in my family wants sangria and tapas at Christmas again this year.
