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. 

Hunchback

Something terrible is happening: I’m getting a back problem. It started months ago, with the sore neck here, the odd twinge there. Turns out that was transferred pain. The real source is where my kidneys are, but now I have replaced my pathological fear of kidney failure with the probability of a more muscular complaint, I fear that soon there will be a new entry in my imaginary telephone book, under ‘C’ - for chiropractor. 

Years and years of bad-postured writing at various different desks over the course of my education seem to have collided with the contained hysteria of having no purpose. This has only been exacerbated by several years of intensive typing activities and heaving literary theory textbooks around. My natural posture was never poker-straight, but recently seems to have deteriorated to that of a defiant hunchback; soon I will become shrunken and wizened, like my 90-year old grandmother. 

This evening, I look like a human question mark. I am bent, but not curious. Pain takes the curiosity away. Pain is introspective, it doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world, it concentrates on itself. Not that I have anything of great note to be getting on with; the extent of my responsibilities are taking the dog to the vet and picking up dry-cleaning. Soon I’ll be retreating back to my tea-stained dressing gown and crappy novels, only bent over in some peculiar position in order to avoid looking like a down-trodden peasant. It brings tears to the eyes and moans to the lips, so god only knows what sciatica is like. 

Lying here, contemplating my gradual descent into muscular agony, a thought has occurred to me. In fact, two thoughts. One is, did my choice of shoes tip my back over the edge and down the slippery slope towards a painful middle-age? Is my rare indulgence in shoe vanity responsible for my worsening condition? I confess that there have been three occasions in which I have fallen off said shoes, whether inebriated or otherwise. Once was in the changing rooms of the shop. So could this be nature’s warning to start wearing MBT shoes in future? Boat-shoes they may be, but they’re kind to the spine... 

The other is, has my pathological hatred of massages aggravated a condition that could have been periodically relieved? I am fortunate enough to have had a number of spa experiences, and each time I have been desperate to avoid the complete torture that is any kind of massage. This is born out of my inability to relax (inherited from father) and irrational intolerance of people that I don’t know ‘touching’ me (also inherited from my father). But of course, each time I declined the opportunity to be pummeled and prodded by a woman in a lilac baby-suit, I was denying my muscles the opportunity to relax just a little. And as a result, they’re punishing me. 

My greatest fear is that I will eventually become a regular viewer of daytime television, although apparently my last three years as a student entitled me to this habit..yet I never felt the need to touch base with ‘Des and Mel’. Regardless, I still fear the possibility that I will grow fond of Jeremy Kyle and his visiting cretins, and may begin to regard them as proper human beings. However, too many other shows appear to rely on the ritual humiliation of members of the public, whether it be demonstrating your rendition of a whale being machine-gunned on X-Factor, or being shouted at by a professional chef because you don’t know what julienne vegetables are. 

In essence, I fear that if this back pain gets any worse, I will spent increasing amounts of my time horizontal on the sofa, with my head at a 45 degree angle at the TV, at a time in my life where spending more time than necessary in a horizontal position is really nothing less than soul-destroying. The purposeless existence of the unemployed English graduate is enough motivation to keep my back teetering on the brink for a while longer, I hope.

Lucy

My dog is old; 91 in human years. Her name is Lucy and I think she has begun to suffer from some form of doggy dementia, now that she is well into her twilight years. She spends her days, lying on her beanbag, looking as if she bears the world’s problems on her furry shoulders: as though she is in charge of Middle Eastern peace talks or responsible for the compilation of the British Rail timetable...but she can’t quite remember why. She wears a permanently miserable expression. I’ve become convinced that she has never ever really looked truly content at any point in her doggy existence, even as a puppy. My mother is quick to assure me that Lucy’s dour expression is a consequence of bone loss in her wobbly, worn old teeth. I personally believe she is in an enduring state of disgruntlement. 

Occasionally, she plods out into the garden, and will quite happily remain there for about ten minutes or so, staring into the middle distance, until she finally decides to leave what my father terms ‘a product’ in one specific corner of the garden. More often than not, she does not even manage this, but just stares, vacantly, with her cloudy, cataract-riddled eyes.

It had reached the point in the household where we would openly discuss what would happen to Lucy “once her time comes”. My father would suggest burying her in the garden, to which my mother would reply “Oh Martin, how could you! She’s only lying over there!”, perhaps forgetting that Lucy has been as deaf as a post since 2009.  

She has a serious eating disorder; this is because she is also a pathological liar. People come and go in our house all the time, and Lucy manages to convince each resident or visitor that she has been starved of nourishment for a week. Out of ‘desperation’, she would raid the bin each time the house was empty. 

She is also stupid. This is because her life-time habit of bin-raiding recently caught up with her. She has her own food, yet the fool decided that the bin would hold a more promising variety of delectable treats. Why on earth she thought a piece of corn on the cob would be palatable, I don’t know. Regardless, Lucy somehow manages to swallow it, unbeknown to my family and I. So follows three days of a literal playing-out of the term ‘sick as a dog’. By Wednesday, however, things had taken a significant turn for the worst. I thought her tiny little dog brain was finally succumbing to its slow but expected demise, little more than a useless sponge that told her to do two things: 1) stare into space some more 2) inexplicably dig holes in the flower border. A rushed visit to the vet revealed an ‘obstruction’ in the shape of a corn on the cob, and immediate surgery. Had we left it any longer, the vet said, then Lucy would have died. 

Naturally, Lucy is blissfully unaware of this. Dogs do things that humans are unable to do (except psychopaths or people reared by wolves). Dogs have no conscience; they do not suffer from feelings of guilt. Lucy remains unfazed by my father’s numerous barbed remarks over the ominous vet bill. She will not wake up in the night, drenched in sweat, thinking about the astronomical costs of anesthetic and gastrointestinal recovery food. Dogs don’t suffer from existential angst. 

One look at Lucy’s greying old face and shaved, bruised legs where her drip had been, and I started to question the point of animal and human existence. Why are we here? Lucy lived to eat, that much was true, and little else ever popped into her tiny little brain. But now that she’s home and recovering, her strange behavior has evaporated into little more than sleeping and eating mouthfuls of cat food, and eyeing each of us with equal amounts of disdain. Naturally her sleep is being constantly disturbed by stumbling, swearing people. Not to mention the furry intervention of the youthful equivalent of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, Ella, shoving her nose into Lucy’s stitches with great enthusiasm. 

Yet, she appears to take this all in a spirit of haughty, ancient doggy tolerance, proving that at the age of 91, there’s life in the old gal yet.