Shop ‘til I drop
WHAT is the maximum number of visits in a day you are allowed to make to your local supermarket, without them slapping a restraining order on you?
How many times do you smugly bring your own bag and scan your loyalty card before Sheila on the checkout nervously announces over the tannoy “security to till 15 please.”
It’s one of those questions of modern etiquette that nobody seems to be able to answer...
Now I’m not talkin’ about maybe two or three trips - that’s normal these days.
A nip in for your Chronicle, some mints on the way to work, then a pop in on the way back to pick up the chicken breasts your lass has decided you need for tea.
Then that final appearance for the pesto sauce you forgot on the previous visit. Nowt unusual.
Three visits in an less than hour ,however..?
My journey into retail-based stalking began geet early with a morning visit to me local big chain supermarket.
In honesty, I could have gone to his little brother a mile nearer my house - a stunted establishment of limited lines, doubled prices and near-sell-by-dates. All of which are dubiously justified by the fact the establishment squats on a petrol pump forecourt.
They might even give it a ‘catchy’ extra name to show it’s not one if their big shops; it’s a bit like giving your mate’s, trampy, less gifted, less good-looking and radgie brother a nickname - just to make sure you don’t confuse him with the real article. As if...
No - I avoided the franchise’s stunted criminal sibling and headed straight for the all singin,’ deal givin,’ full range providin’ big daddy of a store.
As I said earlier, it was a dawn raid to get breakfast for me blended family mob.
Mind you, I was fully committed on going full-Geordie; no healthy Jesmond organic, artisan, ethically-sourced stuff. Givowwer!
I got some of that ‘so full fat it’s almost liquid lard’ milk, proper white flabby bread, cheap eggs probablylaid by chain gang chickens - and bacon with more fat visible than on Cullercoats beach during a heatwave.
Quickly, I got back home feeling like ‘man the provider’ as I unpacked the goodies for my starving clan.
Then my face fell as the two youngest enquiried: ‘Great Mike/ dad but this juice has bits in and you know we like smooth.”
Bits in! Smooth!! I was about to go all 70s dad and announce how flippin’ lucky they were I’d even bothered to go there in the first place.
Crikey , back in the day, to get my fatha to go to Laws Stores even once would have involved Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Pans People and Raquel Welsh giving away cans of Tennants at the checkouts...
My rant is cut short by my beloved reminding me ‘We aren’t going to eat a thing love - you’ve forgotten the cooking spray.’
Aww ***** , the cooking spray! No arguing with the Gaffa - so it’s back I go.
I can’t even nip into the robbing petrol station shop as they don’t do the ‘fat fighter’ approved, zero calorie stuff that’s evaporated from the sweat of retired supermodels.
So it’s back to the superstore again, with a grin of recognition from the long-suffering lass who polices the technophobic numpties on the self-service checkouts.
This is ridiculous..but not as half as embarrassing as in 15 minutes time when I’ve returned in blind panic for the third time in an hour to reclaim my phone and my wallet...