Horrible Supermarket

The trivial subject matter of this blog has sunk to new lows, mostly because I have concluded that I seem to delight in being miserable; it is what fuels my occasional ranting about the mundane and universal. And this post is perhaps the most mundane and universal of all: the supermarket shop.

Convenience required making a visit to an alternative supermarket last weekend. It was the sort of supermarket that you would only use to stock up on their shampoo deals and Kettle Chip offers. Usually, my mother makes a point of driving over the bridge to the shrine of middle-class grocery shopping quality that is Waitrose. I usually delight in making a visit there, and often accompany her, purely because the whole experience is so pleasant. Gleaming floors, impeccably arranged displays of tomatoes and subtle signs informing of this week’s 3 for 2s. There is no such thing as a lurid ‘OFFERS!!!’ sign in a Waitrose supermarket; instead they like to place the emphasis on Delia’s latest seasonal offering, or the importance of buying organic lamb. 

Before we left for the Alternative Supermarket, my mum advised my father and I to dress warmly. It was another maddeningly warm October day; the sun was like an oxyacetylene torch directed on Plymouth, but I obeyed and wore a cardigan, leggings and a shirt. 

We arrived, and after negotiating the vast and hazardous car park, made it through the doors to find ourselves in Antarctica: blinding white light and low temperatures. For a moment, I felt as if I was on a skiing holiday without sunglasses. If a flock of penguins had wandered down the aisle towards us, I would not have been at all surprised. I pulled my cardigan around me and looked in pity at the other shoppers. Most of them were shivering in their unseasonal choice of t-shirts and shorts. One crazed woman was wearing a summer dress, as if she had just ambled off a beach. All of them were wearing the same miserable expression.

I think that a supermarket lives or falls on the freshness of its fruits and vegetables, and this one fell a very long way from this criteria. Having the Waitrose standards firmly ingrained in my psyche somewhere, looking at the pitiful display of soft tomatoes and withered corn on the cob was not encouraging. It was a veritable mish-mash of over-ripe bananas and withered salad onions. I found myself yearning for the perfectly stacked shelves of Waitrose strawberries.

Trawling around the rest of the supermarket was something akin to soul-destroying. I overheard a woman asking a manager where the yoghurts might be, his reply was ‘back there somewhere’. By the time we had reached the checkout, my hands and feet were icy cold. I longed to abandon the trolley and make for the balmy October weather outside. Instead I became privately incensed with the flimsy carrier bags that proved impossible to open. To make conversation with the check-out boy, my dad asked if he was cold in his short-sleeved shirt. “Oh, I’m used to it now” he said, with Scott of the Antarctic bravery. Clearly, customers were expected to have an insulating layer of blubber akin to that of a whale. 

During the journey home, I thought about the rotten tomatoes, the unfriendly temperature, the miserable faces of the shoppers. It was hard to forget the dim-witted manager and the impossible carrier bags. I found myself wildly considering, for a moment, to go back there and make a complaint. I managed to put away this brief, uncharacteristic moment of madness and instead consoled myself with the idea that soon enough I’d be trawling down a Waitrose aisle, choosing from seven different varieties of hummus. Soon enough I would be indulging in my proper breakfast of porridge. 

Yet, I am not enough of a Waitrose wanker to not recognise how some of their products are a con. For instance, some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of a horse’s nosebag, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of bird feed and the sweepings of a squirrel’s hibernation stash, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in shops like Waitrose and Fortnum and Mason - and charging £6.99 for the privilege. That, I do not condone in any respect. 

However, I do place an almost obsessional importance upon the fact that the meat I eat came from a happy pig, cow, duck, walrus, and the eggs I bake with are from happy chickens. I am quite happy to be branded a food snob for this, but I am not happy with putting up with hypothermic temperatures and rotten tomatoes. 

Heatwave: an account of a weekend's sufferings

Friday Sometimes, I genuinely feel that I should have been born in another era, one in which the Thames froze over every winter. The term ‘global warming’ would be meaningless; it would be regarded as ‘extreme’ if snow did not fall in January.

I do not react well to heat, and for it to touch 29 degrees on the last day of September, I am in hell. I have returned from Tesco’s with bags full of tonic and other nice things to add to gin, in preparation for easing my pain. The obscene temperatures have seen an inexplicable rise in fruit-fly numbers, and I have spent my day embroiled in a hopeless battle with the little shits. On Spotlight last night, Plymouth’s medical officer warned we citizens of the town that we must drink at least three liters of liquid a day. I was planning to follow his advice assiduously. 

My house is not a pleasant environment for pre-drinks. The windows are closed to prevent further invasions of fruit flies. The Aga is like a fiery monster in the kitchen, but I refuse to switch it off out of principal. Two years ago, in the middle of a deep, icy winter that saw us trapped within the parameters of our own street, my mother had made the decision for our family to be Aga purists. The conventional oven would be confined to the single task of baking muffins. And two years later, two weeks into autumn, as my parents bask in the German sun, I am living with the results of our puritanism. 

My friends arrive around nine, and it is still uncomfortably warm. Its the kind of temperature that makes your trousers stick to the wrong parts of your bottom. So we begin to down chilled wine and gnaw on ice cubes; I begin ranting about my new nemesis, the fruit fly, and how I regard them as practical burglars in my home. The Aga continues to throw out hot air like a small volcano; the fruit flies meet a boozy death in our half-empty wine glasses. The windows remain closed. I find myself looking back, damp-eyed to the days when I left the windows of the house wide open, the door unlocked and ajar, Radio 4 left on loudly in the kitchen. In my half-drunk state I imagined legions of potential fruit-fly ‘burglars’ arriving on the doorstep, hearing Nigel fall from a roof in The Archers, and, deciding they just cannot tolerate such poorly written melodrama, buzz off to plague someone else. 

Saturday It is 10 in the morning, and God only knows what the temperature is. I have the very worst of hangovers, as if someone has pooed inside my head. I feel like lying in a grave; at least the soil would be cool. Flicking through the Saturday papers and I’m half expecting to see a resurgence of the mid-summer heatwave headlines: of people frying eggs on the bonnets of their cars in the middle of Plympton, with the caption reading “What a scorcher!”. I swear it is that hot today, and it is the first day of October. My rage at this fact is indescribable, as are the waves of alcohol-induced nausea. I swear it is that hot today. Delia Smith could cook a full English on my forehead, including fried bread. I look in the mirror and see a glistening sheen of sweat that has nothing to do with my hangover.

Later on that day, the fruit-fly invasion reaches a crescendo. I realise that creeping around the house in my dressing gown, with a permanently rolled-up Telegraph magazine, does nothing for my image, but the heat has made me half delirious. 

It appears to be Fruit Fly Week in my house; they have truly made themselves at home. Remember that song, ‘C’mon over to my house, hey hey, we’re having a party’? Well, they did come over to my house. To an outsider, I must look like I’m on e, constantly darting around in sudden bursts of energy. It’s an uphill battle because the fruit-flies adore the hot-house temperature of the kitchen, and their numbers seem to be doubling. The Aga seems to be providing something like a fruit-fly maternity ward. You can practically hear the champagne corks popping. 

2pm 28 degrees Celsius A respite of one degree has done nothing for my mood, or my hangover, or the fruit fly infestation. All around me people are exclaiming how wonderful this weather is; that I must be the only person in Britain who is cursing this unseasonal weather to hell. Yet, as I recline in the marginally cooler living room, a man walks past the window wearing a pinstriped business suit, shirt, tie, waistcoat and heavy leather shoes.

Incredulous, I wonder if he would wear the same outfit in the middle of Barcelona (experiencing the same temperatures). Of course he would not; he would at least adopt the unfortunate attire of a holidaying middle-aged Englishman: too-tight khaki shorts, off-white vest, black socks, sandals, and a hat with side-flaps. He’d still look completely ludicrous and be an embarassment to the nation, but at least he would be dressed in something appropriate to the weather. 

I feel a strong temptation to run outside and shout “Take your clothes off”, especially as all I feel like doing is lying in the shade in nothing but my pants. But I don't, because it would mean going out and acknowledging the fact that autumn in England now means temperatures in the high twenties. It would also frighten him; he would mistake me for a mad young woman who has been affected by the heat. 

Whereas, the truth is that I am a mad young woman who has been affected by the Aga, the fruit-flies, the gin, but not the heat.