Dear God...

Today I met one of your beloved: someone more precious to you than a bird of the air or the grass of the field. You will be pleased to hear she seemed quite content with her lot, although I dare say you know better than I. This is how it went:

We meet in the biscuit isle, where she smiled at my daughter and then confesses to me, "My dogs like those Hundreds and Thousands biscuits, for a treat. I just give them one when I go our, or before bed. Just for a treat."

I am hesitating over sesame seed or cracked pepper water-crackers. Warmed by her unexpected friendliness in a place where I usually pretend I am alone, I scan the shelves with her. We spot the pink lovelies hidden by a notice- they are on special.

Biscuit choices made on both sides I move on to tinned fruits and vegetables. "We keep running into each other!" she says with a brittle laugh as we steer our trolleys around each other, moving in opposite directions. She is in her mid sixties I guess. Her grey hair short and layered flatly over her head, her aqua cotton knit top neatly pressed, her stretch trousers likewise pressed with a sharp crease down each leg. Very respectively presented God.

I stop before a splendid variety of tinned tomatoes wondering at supermarkets as a place to meet people. When I was still single they were recommended. But I failed to see then, and I still do, how increasingly awkward encounters, laced over an acreage of increasingly intimate household products could be a good way to begin a meaningful relationship. Remembering the eating habits of my husband when I first met him I consider the frozen-food section the most promising.... a handsome man with lonely eyes in a crumpled cotton shirt and I, both reaching for the same bag of Potato Gems.... mmm.

At the dairy cabinet we meet again. She is clutching her trolley and staring into the tubs of margarine. "Ah, we need butter," I say, pulling my trolley in beside hers and pleased to have my memory jogged. I prefer to shop spontaneously God. I don't bother with a list, liking the 'memory jogging' mode of shopping, although I often do arrive home without some vital staple. The owner of the little dogs appears at a loss, and I lean past her with a smile, reaching decisively for the Dairy Soft Blend butter, low salt, able to be spread straight from the fridge.

She heaves an enormous round container, decorated with orange and yellow daffodils from the shelf. Surely it contains enough margarine for a family of 6 for a month? "We always used to get this one... when my husband was alive," she told me. "Aah, right," I reply, my tub of butter poised over the trolley. "Of-course, he preferred butter but we used to have this."

Beneath this simple statement I hear what I am sure you have heard so many times before, God. I hear her tell me it wasn't her fault he died so young, how she did her best to keep him off the dairy, but he did so love his cream, his sausages, his bacon. She coughed, a loose wet cough. A 'productive cough' I would have described it to a doctor. She should give up the cigarettes, I thought. All that trouble to get him onto mono-unsaturated daffodil decorated margarine, and there she was killing herself with cigarettes. "So now I usually get this one," she went on, holding up another smaller version of the same cheerful daffodil decorated margarine.

"Aah, that looks good," I say. I am ready to move on, but do not like to leave her to choose her margarine without support. "I'm sure it doesn't matter which you get if you only use a little," I offer as a way of encouragement. But she does not appear to hear me. She rummages in the shelving again, and pulls out another tub; dark blue, with a tape-measure print running around its perimeter. She scans the ingredients carefully, muttering them aloud and nodding. I offer the same argument again, "Yep, that looks a good one. Although if you don't use a lot it doesn't really matter." I regularly purchase butter myself, despite my husband's steadily increasing girth. Butter is at least naturally yellow.

She appears near a decision so I slowly wheel my trolley onwards; slowly, saunteringly so as not to appear uncaring. We meet two more times. Both times my daughter says gleefully, "Oh why do we keep meeting like this?!" Both times we smile at each other briefly before resuming serious, focused shoppper's faces. We are in the home cleaning and personal hygiene sections now, both matters obviously requiring individual consideration. We do not stop to discuss toilet-ducks or panty-liners. It is understood that these choices are a woman's to make alone. And God, I must say I felt more comfortable for her, knowing she should be on familiar ground now.

At the check-out I hear her cough, but I do not look around. Our brief acquaintanceship is over. We part our ways: I to my newly renovated, centrally heated house and my very alive husband; her to those two breathless little dogs, waiting with ears cocked on a worn linoleum kitchen floor for the arrival of the one who teases and loves them and can deny them nothing now they are all she has.

What tree is this?

Name that tree... a tree it is easy to imagine dinosaurs chomping on, its branches perfectly arranged for climbing in this era. This picture taken at Tarra Warra Monastry, Victoria. A prize for the person who correctly names this tree!