Deliver us our daily bread Your shopping come, your will be done

ONCE upon a time, people who wanted our money reputedly said: “Stand and deliver!” Now they say: “Sit down and be delivered to!” My comparison is typically inept. I do not mean to infer that supermarkets – the “people” to whom I’m referring – are robbers. Rather, they are benefactors, bringers of sustenance, harbingers of hope.

In addition, I cannot think that anyone in Scottish history ever said: “Stand and deliver!” Sounds a bit pompous for us. The nearest instance that history provides Scotia-side is: “Gonnae lend us a tenner till Setterday, like?”

But my otherwise excellent point stands: today, the world comes to us. To give my warbling some ersatz relevance, I draw your attention to distress caused among the bourgeoisie by grocery delivery firm Ocado ending its partnership with Waitrose and starting to work with Marks & Stephens, or whatever it’s called.

Of Waitrose I’ve little to say. My contempt for the self-consciously posh supermarket is a matter of record. If you shop there, you should be ashamed of yourself. If you shop there while wearing a waxed jacket, you should be imprisoned. Maybe it’s just me who thinks like this.

I’ve a little more time for Markies. Its clientele is the Abigail’s Party crowd, but I accept that it provides succour to the lonely and unloved, who frequently fall victim to its greatest trick of portraying on the covers of its ready-meals repasts that look glorious but which in reality taste like dry-roasted snotters.

Of Ocado I know little. The typically stupid modern name – ostensibly mangled from the joythrottling word “avocado” – is mildly irritating. But Markies customers were wildly irritated this week on ordering their ready-made guano casserole, artisan’sphlegm bread, and lavatory-baked quinoa.

The system was reportedly overloaded and hundreds of orders cancelled though, in a surprise development, the firm denied this, or at least said the cancellations were relatively few. The disappointments were, I wish they’d said, pixie spittle in an ocean of satisfaction.

That’s the problem with having your groceries delivered: you’re dependent on other people, which is never a good idea. A buddy of mine from Cornwall used to say to an entitled person: “You want the world on a stick, you do.”

But if you ordered the world on a stick that’s what you’re entitled to expect. Particularly if you’ve paid £9.99 for it.

I should say we don’t get any such deliveries where I live. And, no, madam, I don’t mean prison. Effectively, or indeed ineffectively, I’m writing from a position of ignorance, which is considered a great asset in journalism. Unsullied by experience, research or so-called “facts” (yawn), the investigator brings to his subject an innocence and purity that lend aloof objectivity.

No one from any delivery firm or supermarket has ever bought me lunch or sent me goods in the hope of securing good publicity, even though I’ve written to them several times suggesting this.

What I can say without fear or favour, however, is that, outwith groceries, we too round here are part of the Delivery Society. Everybody orders everything from Amazon.

I’m no different in this regard. Rather than make an 85-mile round trip to buy some DIY item, I order it online, saving on petrol money for a journey that often sees me return empty-handed anyway.

Does my arguably rational behaviour affect business that much? There are only two such retailers round here – that is to say within 1,656 square kilometres – and one is focused on tradesmen.

I’d visit the other if I lived in the same village, just for the banter and the outside chance of having sex with someone.

But you can’t expect me to drive all that way for an item costing less than a fiver (the DIY item not the sex). Besides which, I’m a consumer not a charity for profit-making businesses. It’s the way of the free market, I’m afraid. Dog orders from dog.

This is our Deliverance, complete with duelling delivery firms. With many folk now working from home, soon there’ll be little reason ever to leave the house. People less mentally strong than I will go stir-crazy, drinking too much and talking to themselves.

But it’ll all work out in the end. At least, that’s what I tell myself over a pint of whisky.

Working wonders

IF everyone shops from home, there might be implications for supermarket workers. They’d still have to fill bags, mind, and wouldn’t have to meet the public, which must be dispiriting.

Night-shift shelf-stackers already avoid them, though it must be hard work. Surprisingly, Tyne and Wear lottery winner Elaine Thompson kept on her night job stacking shelves at Marks & Wotsname. Her purpose: to impress upon her children the joy of work.

Blimey. I haven’t worked for years, unless you count this stuff, which I regard more as a moral mission to save wretches like you. Particularly you, madam.

Winning the lottery wouldn’t change me anyway. I’d still have the same nose, so can’t see the point of it. The point of winning the lottery, madam, not the point of my nose. God, this is hard work.