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.