Slug repellent: try sticky-backed copper tape across the relevant thresholds. I have a roll that you can borrow to test it out. (Acquired for dollshouse electrics).
Shopping trolleys: for years, I've been murmuring that the world needs Katherine Hamnett or Body Shop to design and market a stylish shopping trolley. We have a plain brown workhorse, bought from one of the suitcase places at Seven Sisters Market. One advantage of a dull, boring, bog standard shopping trolley is that you can leave it standing by the check-outs at the supermarket while you whizz around with a trolley or shopping baskets without being too worried if anyone should decide to nick it -- if they're desperate enough to go for such a boringly utilitarian object, their need must be more desperate than ours.
This is our third shopping trolley: I think the first was one of those lightweight foldaway thingies in discreet black -- whose wheels folded away when you tried wheeling it along with any load in, which made it completely useless. Then I picked up a fairly decrepit secondhand one from a local secondhand furniture shop, which we used until it suffered structural collapse. It was so handy that we rushed to the market to replace it.
We also have two of those 'hand trucks' that get advertised in mail order catalogues' gardening sections -- also v. useful for trips to allotment or B&Q. However, both have developed problems of axle pins dropping out and getting lost.
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Shopping trolleys: for years, I've been murmuring that the world needs Katherine Hamnett or Body Shop to design and market a stylish shopping trolley. We have a plain brown workhorse, bought from one of the suitcase places at Seven Sisters Market. One advantage of a dull, boring, bog standard shopping trolley is that you can leave it standing by the check-outs at the supermarket while you whizz around with a trolley or shopping baskets without being too worried if anyone should decide to nick it -- if they're desperate enough to go for such a boringly utilitarian object, their need must be more desperate than ours.
This is our third shopping trolley: I think the first was one of those lightweight foldaway thingies in discreet black -- whose wheels folded away when you tried wheeling it along with any load in, which made it completely useless. Then I picked up a fairly decrepit secondhand one from a local secondhand furniture shop, which we used until it suffered structural collapse. It was so handy that we rushed to the market to replace it.
We also have two of those 'hand trucks' that get advertised in mail order catalogues' gardening sections -- also v. useful for trips to allotment or B&Q. However, both have developed problems of axle pins dropping out and getting lost.