May I take a few hundred words to explore the dark and murky world of supermarket shopping.
“Gareth, would you have time tomorrow to do a big supermarket shop?”
Brilliant. I used to love doing the big shop. It has been a while but i remember I used to be rather fantastic at it. Writing my list. Planning my route. Speed and efficiency being my motto.
I accepted with delight, galloping upstairs to grab a pen and paper. Fail to plan, plan to fail. As I returned, my wife was at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me. With a piece of paper! “Here is the list”, she said.
“A list? You mean, not my list. I am following your list?” This was unknown territory and I immediately had the feeling a child gets, who goes from being the big confident fish at primary school, to considerably smaller at secondary equivalent (not sure that works actually but heh, hopefully you get the point).
I arrived at the supermarket (although I stopped to get fuel first and once again, apologies to the guy whose car I inadvertently sat in after filling up. It was only when I noticed the gear stick was different to mine that I saw the error of my ways. He did not look happy as he came out of the garage. Sorry pal, easy mistake to make). Then on to the supermarket amed with the list. Not my list.
And the rest can only be described as the most frustrating 2 hours of my life.
First item on the list. Tomatoes. No specific type. No volume. Just tomatoes. Are these for salad purposes? Or perhaps cooking? Roasting? Now, considering as we all know there are about 23 versions to choose from, I was falling at the first hurdle.
Next – hummus. Now, I like hummus as much as the next person. But, as I found out, it doesn’t seem to have a natural place in a supermarket i.e. they hide it!
Uncle Ben’s Jambalaya. Loads of ‘Ben’s products. But 15 minutes wasted looking for his Uncle, only to be told by a passing customer that Uncle Ben is no longer a thing and it is now just simply Ben. We are now 40 minute into the shop, I have milk, cheese, loads of different types of tomatoes and some beer. Beer was not on the list but I to quickly start to feel good about myself and find something I could locate.
I swear, nothing on that list had any indication of volume or weight. How many sausages od I get to get a tick in the box? And would you believe, on the list was the following ‘cousin birthday card’. And in brackets, ‘don’t get if the card isn’t nice’. Great advice!
Ten minutes looking for Peruvian prawns (turns out she meant Argentinian, which were readily available, BUT THE LIST SAID PERUVIAN). But I was finally broken by the ‘tomato pizza garlic bread x 2’. Now, in my simple head, pizza and garlic bread are two different products. And the crowd of about 12 customers I had collated to share thoughts on the topic agreed. But they are a thing. Our boys have them regularly, apparently.
Exhausted, bruised and beaten, I made my way to the counter. I accidentally dropped the list on the floor. I picked it up to notice the words ‘strawberry milkshake’. I don’t remember seeing that. Turns out, there was a full list on the other side of the paper.
I cried.
