COLIN HOGG

THE SUPERMARKET STAFF WILL MISS COLIN AS HE VOWS TO PARK HIS TROLLEY AND STAY AT HOME WITH FOMO

Unusually among men, I enjoy supermarket shopping. I could say it’s one of the highlights of my week, but I won’t because that might seem a little tragic. There’s a supermarket just down the road where I know the shelves intimately, where I can find all that I need – except perhaps chicken stock.

Occasionally I’ve wondered whether I go there too much, but now I don’t need to wonder any more because it turns out that I do. Just the other day the chap who stands out front, greeting shoppers and herding the shopping trolleys back inside, said to me, “Do you realise you’ve been here three out of the last four days?”

I hadn’t until he mentioned it, though I had begun to wonder whether I was becoming too familiar a face in the check-out queue. The staff did keep saying things like, “See you soon”, or, “Good to see you again.” The man who runs the beer department greets me like an old friend.

I’d begun to feel anxious about it, worrying whether I was developing a supermarket-dependency problem. That sort of thing is probably common among people like me – working alone from home, starved of daytime company, subject to sudden urges to drive up the road to top up on cat food and coffee.

But no more. I’m breaking the habit. Well, not breaking it so much as cutting it back. Now I’m determined to go to the supermarket just once a week, buy up larger than usual and then stay away. It’s actually quite easy to organise yourself to never run out of anything much. I’m finding though, the veges are a bit droopy by the end of the week.

I’m not sure anyone at my supermarket’s noticed my new low profile yet. Today was shopping day and the check-out woman said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t,” I told her. But she gave me one of those annoying knowing smiles that some people specialise in and said, “You won’t be able to stay away.”

“We’ll see,” I said, straining to get my tottering trolley moving out to the car.

I’m not entirely sure yet whether this cutback on supermarket visits will result in a cutback in our weekly shopping bill, but here’s hoping. I am missing the outings, though.

On the subject of outings, I have no immediate plans to visit my kids and grandkids in Australia just yet. Once

I’ve had the vaccine and it feels like there’s very little chance of being trapped on the wrong side of the Tasman, I’ll be good to go.

And on the subject of the Covid-19 vaccine, I have the feeling we might all know people who are reluctant, for various reasons, to have the jabs and make themselves and the whole country safer. It’s a worry, of course, but I suspect it will become less and less a worry as more and more people line up for their shots. If we can see it as a community effort rather than an individual one and take comfort in the courage of the majority, then New Zealand should swing into sensible action the way

New Zealand does in a crisis. I’ll see you in the queue.

‘The man who runs the beer department greets me like an old friend’